11 · Troubleshooting
When something does not behave the way the manual says it should, start here. Each section opens with the symptom and gives you the checks in the order most likely to fix it, and where it matters, the one habit that prevents the repeat. If none of them do, the last section tells you how to reach a human.
Find your symptom by where you are standing
A page from this manual is not in your rail
The rail's groups carry the destinations most people use weekly; everything else still exists, it is just not pinned. Three ways to reach any page in this manual:
- Press Ctrl/⌘ K and type the page name. This always works.
- Open More from the Home panel for the full searchable catalog.
- Click a group's icon in the left rail: the panel beside it lists that group's destinations in full.
Sections whose destination sits outside the group panels carry a "via More" marker on their Where line throughout this manual.
Your upload was rejected
- Check the type: proposals and contracts accept PDF and DOCX only. Rename tricks do not help, because the file signature is checked, not the extension.
- Check the size: 40 MB per proposal or contract file, 3.5 MB for photos and screenshots. All limits are listed in Plans, allowances & limits.
- Very large files upload straight from your browser to storage, which can take a moment on a slow connection. Leave the tab open until the file shows as attached.
- A scanned contract inside an image-only PDF still uploads fine; the AI tools read it with vision.
A benchmark says there is not enough data
That message is deliberate: the platform never estimates a market position it cannot defend. To get a ranked verdict:
- Widen the region filter to all regions, or check that the deal size is realistic.
- Add a list price or seat count in that vendor's benchmark tool; the data coverage page names the one step that closes each gap.
- For a vendor outside the library's coverage, upload the proposal for analyst benchmarking instead.
An AI feature is greyed out or asks you to upgrade
- Check whether your plan includes AI: the Free plan has none and the Trial has a small starter allowance. See the plan table.
- If the plan is right, the allowance may be spent: the Billing meter shows what you have used and when the rolling window frees up.
- Only org owners can upgrade. If you are not one, the feature names who is, or check the workspace summary at the foot of the rail.
You hit the research download limit
Downloads are capped at 10 per day and 30 per week per person so access stays fair across organizations. Reading papers in the viewer is unlimited. The allowance frees up on its own as recent downloads age out; if you need more right away, message the team from Chat and an admin can reset it.
An invite never arrived
- Owners: check Pending invitations under Members. A bounced or delayed delivery status means the email never landed; fix the address and resend.
- Ask the invitee to check their spam folder for a Vera AI sender.
- If your organization has domain capture on, the person can also sign up directly with their work email and be approved as a join request.
Alert or digest emails are not arriving
- The Terms watch and Research Agent emails are off until you turn them on, with the switch at the top left of each page. Nothing is sent by default.
- Check Notifications settings: each alert kind can be in-app, email, both, or off.
- A one-click unsubscribe in any email turns off only that email, but check you did not use one by accident.
- Still nothing? Check spam, then message the team.
You lost your authenticator device
On the sign-in page choose Email me a link and sign in with the one-time link; at the six-digit code prompt choose Use a recovery code and enter one of the one-time backup codes you saved when you set up two-factor; each works once. Then register the new device under Security. If the backup codes are gone too, ask an org owner to contact our team from Chat and we will verify you another way.
You cannot sign in through single sign on
If your organization enforces SSO for your email domain, the password form will not work and you must sign in through your identity provider. Access problems there (a deactivated IdP account, a group you were removed from) are fixed by your own IT team, not in Vera AI. Org owners can review the configuration under Single sign on.
A share link stopped working
Benchmark share links are valid for 30 days unless they were created as kept-live links. Open the scenario or report again and create a fresh link; the old one cannot be revived. Research share links can also be revoked by the person who created them.
Sample data is showing in your views
Sample rows never mix with your real data and never feed your alerts; they exist so screens are not empty while you explore. Remove the whole sample portfolio in one click from the dashboard. If you see a row you believe is sample data after removal, it is not: check who uploaded it on the record's activity tab.
Charts and analytics look empty or thin
Portfolio and its Spend and Estate map lenses build from proposals and agreements that carry an annual value. Add the missing values on Agreements and the charts fill in immediately. Data health ranks every gap by what filling it unlocks.
Your invite link expired
Invitations expire after 7 days. Ask an owner to resend from Members: resending restarts the clock and refreshes the sign-in details. Prevention: send invites when people can act on them, not before a holiday.
You are held at two-factor setup
Your organization requires two-factor for every member, so sign-in holds you at registration until it is on. Scan the code with any authenticator app (Google Authenticator, 1Password, Authy), enter the six digits, and save the backup codes somewhere real; the hold is the policy working, not a fault.
Your signup email was declined
Two address families are declined by design: personal domains (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and the like), because the platform licenses to organizations, and the corporate domains of software vendors and resellers, because it is licensed to buyers only (Terms of Service, Section 2). Use your work address; if your company already runs the platform with domain capture on, signup routes you to your team's admin instead of creating a duplicate workspace.
You landed in the wrong workspace
Your account can belong to more than one organization; the org chip in the top bar switches between them, and the workspace summary at the foot of the rail always names the tenant you are in. If a workspace you expect is missing from the chip, its owner has not invited that email address; there is no cross-workspace visibility to fall back on, by design.
The whole team is blocked by a network policy
An IP allowlist under Security baseline pins the workspace to known networks, and an office IP change blocks everyone, owners included, until the policy is updated from an allowed network (home office on the list, or the range widened). Every denial lands in the audit log, and changes take up to a minute to reach every server. Prevention: prefer ranges over single addresses when egress IPs rotate.
Your session keeps ending
Three legitimate causes, in likelihood order: Remember this device for 30 days was unticked at sign-in, so the session ends with the browser; an owner has set a maximum session age or idle timeout under Security baseline; or your password changed, which signs out every other session deliberately.
A contract reads with no terms
Almost always a scan with no text layer, and no longer a dead end: the platform queues its own transcription, reads the pages image by image in the background, and fills the record from the transcription, usually within the hour. The Archive holds it under Needs a look and Migration Studio names it in the exceptions queue while that runs. Only a scan too illegible to transcribe stays there, with the reason stated; fill in the vendor, dates, and value by hand and the record refiles instantly, and your correction always outranks the automatic read.
A re-dropped folder seems to skip files
It found duplicates, and that is the feature: documents are deduplicated by content, not file name, so byte-identical files are counted and skipped, never imported twice. Two different documents sharing a name are both kept. The run's results name everything skipped and why; nothing is dropped silently.
An interrupted upload did not resume
A reloaded tab cannot resume files that never finished uploading, because the browser lost its handle on them. In the Archive, everything already uploaded still scans and files; re-drop the folder for the remainder (dedupe makes that safe). In Migration Studio, the work list survives on our side: Re-pick the folder so the new tab can find your files, and Re-queue stalled files if a run was cut mid-upload.
The dropped paper has nothing to benchmark
A master agreement with no figures gives the benchmark nothing to price, and the run says so rather than guessing. Drop the document that carries the money, usually the order form, the quote, or the renewal proposal. The clause-reading tools (Contract Agent, the MSA Agent) are the right engines for the figure-less paper itself.
An emailed-in document never appeared
- Confirm the rail is provisioned and you used the right address: each of the five email-in rails has its own, listed under Integrations.
- The attachment must be PDF or DOCX; a reply whose attachment cannot be read is flagged for a human look rather than filed wrong.
- Each organization's inbound addresses carry unguessable tokens, so mail forwarded from outside your team to the wrong tenant's address is dropped, not misfiled.
You have no list price for the discount reading
Leave it blank and proceed: the range still computes from the cohort, and the list value only adds your own placement to the scale. Where the vendor's paper prints net but no list, a dropped-quote brief states a working baseline, explains why it is credible, tells you exactly what to request from the vendor to verify it, and prices the sensitivity if it is wrong. That page is behaving correctly; the ask for the list-price breakdown belongs in your next vendor email.
The recommended outcome reads Not derivable
On Renewals, the market-median outcome carries the recommended flag only when a delivered benchmark supports it; without one, the desk refuses to guess and says *Not derivable*. Run an instant benchmark or upload the paper for analyst benchmarking and the outcome fills in.
A long AI run seems stuck
Most long runs are working, not stuck: briefs take about three minutes and show a progress meter with elapsed seconds against the usual duration, archive scans continue after you close the tab and notify you when done, and migration reading runs over hours in passes. The honest checks: a real progress meter that has genuinely frozen for several minutes deserves a reload (saved runs and cases keep your place), and a run that ended in failure states its reason rather than spinning.
The report opens with a review notice
The trust strip on AI-generated reports opens with the grounding state. "Figures verified against your data" is the normal case; a review notice means one or more figures could not be fully verified and deserves your eye before forwarding. It is a flag, not a failure: the sources and generation date are beside it, and regenerating after fixing the underlying record usually clears it.
A figure reads "not on file"
The report or answer needed a number your records do not hold, and said so instead of estimating. The fix is data, not retry: add the missing annual value, date, or list price on the owning record. The Data gaps report in the Reporting studio catalog names exactly which missing values to fix first.
Your currency shows differently than you expected
Three rules explain nearly every case. Rows keep the currency they were entered in; the workspace display currency covers only rows that did not record one, and never converts anything. Benchmarks are held in USD and stay labeled USD so market comparisons hold. In benchmark tools that support it, picking a currency carries through the whole page and its exports at a fixed conversion rate printed under the selector with its date, so a saved position replays identically instead of drifting.
You hit the daily question meter
Fair-use caps protect the conversational surfaces, and you never hit one unwarned: once less than half a day's cap remains, a quiet meter appears near the input with the count left and the upgrade path. Caps reset at midnight UTC. Trial workspaces meter Vera at ten questions a day and always show the meter; Chapter 10 has every number.
No renewal alert has ever fired
Working as designed until someone opts in: every renewal alert starts off, on every channel, so a workspace stays silent about deadlines until asked. Press Turn on money-critical alerts under Notifications to switch the set on in one click. This is per person; your colleague's alerts say nothing about yours.
One agreement never alerts
Check the agreement carries both an expiry date and a notice period on Agreements. Without both there is no window to open, so nothing can fire, and the same gap keeps the agreement off the renewals queue and the control room timeline. The notice period hides in the contract's termination or renewal clause; a decode finds it fast.
The control room is empty
An empty Control room means the rows are missing, not that nothing is happening: only agreements with an expiry date and a notice period can appear on the pressure timeline. Fix the dates and the windows appear. The board's lanes fill only when agents, workflows, or mandates actually run in your workspace.
An alert arrived later than the event
Usually quiet hours: inside your chosen window, phones stay silent and non-critical alert emails wait until it ends, by design. Money-critical alerts (renewal deadlines, deadline escalations, uplift breaches, above-market warnings, anomalies) always come through immediately. Also check whether the alert kind is set to the weekly digest, which bundles it into one Monday email instead of individual sends.
The daily leverage note went quiet
Two silent-by-design cases before any fault: on a day when nothing moved under your deals, nothing is sent; and the note rides your renewal alert setting, so switching renewal alerts off stops it. Every note also carries a one-click Turn it off link, worth checking you did not use in passing. Findings that scored below the line are counted at the note's foot rather than dropped, so a thin note is still a complete one.
The confidentiality scan blocked your share
Vendor-facing drafts and public share links pass a confidentiality scan, and a block lists exactly what to remove: an internal figure, a name, or a detail that should not leave the workspace. Edit the flagged items and share again. The scan is the reason a shared document can be trusted not to leak your percentile, your cohort, or your internals.
A Word or PDF link is missing on a row
Not every document type exports to every format: rows in the library show a Word link in the Formats column only where the type supports it, and reports carry their own PDF and Word downloads on the report page. If a type you need regularly lacks the format, tell the team; the export catalog in the reference card lists what exports to what today.
A vendor appears twice
Different legal-entity spellings of one company (Salesforce, Salesforce UK Limited, SFDC Ireland Limited) can arrive as separate rows from different documents. The archive files one folder per vendor across entities, migration reconciliation proposes same-company merges with evidence, vendor aliases live under the renewal calendar's governance settings, and Vera OS's vendor view folds spellings into one negotiating party. If a duplicate survives all that, merge is a support ask away in Chat.
Entitlement rows are marked "confirm"
Connector-reported entitlement figures are held out of alerting until a human confirms the contracted numbers, so a sync error can never fire a money alert. Confirm the figures against the contract on Billing watch and the daily check starts enforcing them.
A shared view cannot be edited
A view an owner shared with the whole organization stays owner-managed: it appears in the Views row of that list for everyone, carries a Shared marker, and only an organization owner can unshare or delete it. Save your own copy under a new name if you need a variant. Views live on the list page they belong to (Analyst Benchmark, Agreements, Vendors, the audit log); the pattern is written up under Saved views.
Your folds and layouts reset on a new device
Some choices are deliberately per device rather than per account: rail group folds, the covers-or-table library toggle, reading-mode lighting, and your recent-apps trail. Your theme, preset, and notification choices follow your account. Two minutes of refolding on a new machine is the whole cost.
Inviting fails because seats are full
The Members verdict states seats in use against your plan's allowance, and inviting past it says exactly what is full. Free a seat by revoking a pending invitation (the reserved seat returns entirely) or removing a departed member, or an owner upgrades the plan under Billing.
Your upload ended Saved, not queued
The upload worked; the analyst queue is what it could not enter, because your plan's benchmark allowance is used up. The proposal page resolves it in place: an owner adds a benchmark credit ($5,000 per analyst benchmark, billed by invoice), or a teammate asks their owner in one click, and the request tracks under Support while it is in flight.
Trial limits surprised you
The two that catch people: trial workspaces read research online but do not download it, and instant benchmark runs are capped at 2 in total (Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud only), so spend them on a vendor you are actually negotiating. Vera is metered at ten questions a day with the meter always visible. Everything else on the trial is the full platform with starter allowances; the plan table has it all.
Something is broken, or nothing here helps
- Message our team from Chat: the "Vera AI team" thread is private between you and our analysts.
- Or email info@vendorbenchmark.com.
- For screen-by-screen help in place, the round help button at the bottom right explains the current page, and Ctrl/⌘ J opens Vera over whatever you are looking at.
Next: Chapter 12 · Integrations, clients & deployment
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