The lowest of three vendor quotes costs the most over three years
Brisklane's quote is a thousand and eighty dollars a month, the lowest of these three. Over the full contract, Brisklane is the most expensive of the three. Claude Docs is Anthropic's new document editor inside Claude. You attach files and ask, and Claude writes a doc you can edit. Claude Docs read all three quotes and laid them out in one table, summed across the whole contract. An operations manager does this before every big software purchase and at each renewal, and the manager picks which vendor to sign. I made up the company, the three vendors and every price. The buyer is Pellworth Building Services, a heating and plumbing contractor replacing the software that schedules its crews.
Anthropic’s vendor review file counts four costs beyond the license fee
Cost Analysis (Total Cost of Ownership)
- Total cost of ownership (not just license fees)
- Implementation and migration costs
- Training and onboarding costs
- Ongoing support and maintenance
- Exit costs (data migration, contract termination)
Anthropic publishes a skill file for this job. A skill file is a set of written instructions Claude can follow for one kind of task. This one's cost section opens with total cost of ownership, meaning everything you pay over the whole contract. Then the file names implementation and migration, training, ongoing support, and exit costs, the price of leaving. All three quotes here lead with their monthly price on page one. Those other four costs are where each vendor put the rest.
Each vendor put its extra cost in a different part of its quote
One-time fees
Terms
Pricing tiers
One-time fees
Price
Brisklane put its extra cost on page two. Page two adds eighteen thousand five hundred dollars to set up the software and move the old records in, plus four thousand dollars for two days of training. Brisklane's terms carry an escalator, a clause that raises the price every year, here by five percent. Leaving costs five thousand dollars more, as a fee to export your data and close the account. Crewmark put its extra cost in a price tier. Crewmark charges thirty-one dollars a user each month, up to fifty users. At fifty-one users, every user moves to thirty-five dollars, the first fifty included. Crewmark also charges forty-five hundred dollars to set up. Veltrope quotes the highest monthly price, sixteen hundred and fifty dollars flat, for up to seventy-five users. Setup, remote training and round-the-clock phone support are included in that price.
The same rows and the same headcount reverse the three-year order
The fix is one table with the same rows for every vendor, added up across three years. The rows are license, setup, training, support and the fee to leave. The table also needs one number missing from all three quotes, the headcount. Pellworth plans for forty users this year, fifty-two next year and sixty the year after, and I typed those numbers into my request. At fifty-two users, Crewmark crosses its tier in year two. On those rows and that headcount, Veltrope totals fifty-nine thousand four hundred dollars. Crewmark totals sixty-six thousand four hundred and twenty dollars. Brisklane totals seventy-nine thousand five hundred and eighty-three dollars, including the five-thousand-dollar fee for leaving. Brisklane comes last even without that fee. The headcount can move Crewmark to the top. Hold Pellworth at forty users for all three years, and Crewmark totals forty-nine thousand one hundred and forty dollars, the lowest of the three.
Three quote PDFs and a request that names the rows go into Claude Docs
| Start with | /docs in the message box |
|---|---|
| Attached | the three quote PDFs |
| Asked | “Put every vendor in the same three-year total cost table with the same rows”excerpt |
| Users | “Assume 40 users in year 1, 52 in year 2 and 60 in year 3.” |
| Ends with | “a Proceed / Negotiate / Pass recommendation for each vendor”excerpt |
| Plans | in beta on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans |
|---|---|
| Default | on by default on Pro, Max, and Team plans |
| Enterprise | off by default until an owner turns it on |
I started with slash docs in the message box and attached the three files. Then I typed one request. The request asks for a comparison memo with every vendor in one three-year cost table, and it lists each line of that table by name. It gives Pellworth's headcount for each year. It ends by asking for a proceed, negotiate or pass call on each vendor. Claude Docs is in beta, an early release. It's on by default on Claude's Pro, Max and Team plans. On Enterprise, an owner has to switch it on first.
Claude’s three-year table found all six costs I hid in the quotes
Wrong, then fixed in the same draft · 4
Assumed, and written down · 3
Before the run, I wrote down six hidden costs, plus three optional add-ons that belong outside the totals. On my run, Claude found all six costs and kept all three add-ons out. Claude also read Veltrope's included setup and training as zero dollars. All twenty-one numbers in Claude's table match my own numbers to the dollar. The draft took two minutes and eighteen seconds, and I timed it. On the way, Claude wrote four wrong numbers and fixed all four before the draft finished. One early line said Brisklane would cost about fifty-six thousand dollars before any setup fee, even without the yearly rise and the exit fee. The fixed line says fifty-three thousand two hundred and forty-eight dollars, below Veltrope, if Brisklane also waived setup. Claude also chose three assumptions without asking me, and wrote each one into the memo.
Claude recommends Veltrope on cost, and the ops manager still picks the vendor
Veltrope
the smallest vendor on the reference calls · my risk to accept
Crewmark
ask to hold $31 a user for the term · $61,044 in Claude’s memo
Brisklane
only if it waives or halves the $18,500 and drops the 5% rise
Here is where I'd stop and read it myself. Claude's memo says proceed with Veltrope, negotiate with Crewmark and pass on Brisklane. The three quotes cover price and contract terms, so Claude's three calls rest on those two things. Read the calls as Claude's proposal. As the ops manager, I add what I know from outside the quotes. On the reference calls with each vendor's customers, Veltrope came across as the smallest company of the three, and that risk is mine to take. I'd ask Crewmark to hold thirty-one dollars a user for the whole term, because Pellworth's growth plan is what trips Crewmark's tier. Brisklane stays in only if Brisklane waives or halves the setup fee and drops the yearly rise.
Claude Docs has no version history yet, so save the memo you send
“Version history isn’t available yet.”
On my account, the Export panel downloads the memo as Word, PDF or Markdown, a plain text file, and sends a copy to Google Docs or Notion. Anthropic's help page says Claude Docs can't take you back to an earlier draft for now. Download the memo you send for sign-off before anyone edits the doc again.
Check every fee in the table against its PDF yourself
Skip Claude for the last read of the numbers. I put each quote beside Claude's memo and tick every price off, and that takes me about twelve minutes. On my run, all twenty-one numbers were right, and I still do it. A draft that fixed itself four times in two minutes can stop one fix short. The final memo has one small slip. The memo prints Brisklane's year-three rate as twenty-nine dollars and seventy-seven cents a user each month. The memo's year-three total uses the unrounded rate, so the printed rate gives a total a dollar and forty cents higher. The headcount is yours to check too, because the headcount decides whether Crewmark comes first or second.
Most of the 29 Claude Docs minutes go to checking Claude’s numbers
about 29 min · estimate
Both totals are estimates for this comparison, and I timed only the draft. By hand, the whole comparison takes about sixty-one minutes, from reading the fine print to writing the memo. With Claude drafting, the run takes about twenty-nine minutes, and a little over two of those minutes are the draft. I spend seventeen minutes ticking fees against the PDFs and redoing the math on the rise and the tier. The last eight minutes go to the decision, the same eight minutes as by hand.
Brisklane’s $27 a user quote costs $79,583 over three years
Back to the lowest monthly price in the stack. Brisklane's thousand-and-eighty-dollar month came with twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars of setup and training on page two, a yearly price rise, and a fee to leave. Which renewal on your desk is ranked by its monthly fee?
