Start with one covenant.
Make the answer reviewable.

For one completed reporting period, Treasury and Controllership prepare the following package after scope and data handling are agreed.

Agreement and amendments

The signed agreement and effective amendments, including the covenant definition, reporting group, limits and adjustment rules.

Supporting schedules

Debt, cash and restrictions, earnings and proposed adjustments. Include the source records and journal references needed to substantiate the amounts and adjustment eligibility.

Existing calculation

The working spreadsheet, supporting workings and any certificate for that period. Agree an independently reviewed reference calculation before comparing results; investigate every difference.

Reviewed interpretation

Your designated reviewers’ treatment of exclusions, caps and material judgments, including relevant documented adviser or lender interpretations. Keep unresolved questions explicit.

Named reviewers

A Treasury owner for the agreement and a Controllership reviewer for the financial records. They confirm the reviewed basis, investigate differences and assess the output.

Customer-created exports can support the initial review; an ERP connection is not a prerequisite. No confidential documents or bank credentials are needed for the first discussion.

Covenant verification stands on its own. Optional planning builds on reviewed covenant constraints, with separate forecasts, permissions and approval. ABL review is complementary where relevant; its availability is not connected to planning.

The first discussion uses a nonconfidential description of the agreement and available records. Agree readiness work, customer preparation, delivery effort and fees before commitment.

1. Confirm the rules. Your designated reviewers approve the agreement interpretation, reporting group and treatment of adjustments. Obtain legal review where your process requires it.
2. Qualify the calculation and records. Implement any required support, reconcile a sample package and test the customer-specific calculation against independent workings. Unresolved support or data gaps mean not ready; the synthetic example alone cannot qualify your agreement.
3. Approve data handling. Agree the evaluation environment, providers, access, reviewer permissions, retention, deletion and evidence export before transferring customer data. Test any required two-person approval explicitly.
4. Define success. Freeze the reporting date, reference workings, control cases, review pack, response and effort targets, assistance and all-in cost before seeing results.

Scope the first check around one completed period. Any additional implementation or source-import work is separately agreed and qualified before evaluation begins. There is no promise of turnkey agreement ingestion.

The determination

Within the agreed limit, outside it, or unable to conclude. Show the applicable limit, calculation and reporting date; keep missing evidence and unresolved judgments visible.

The comparison

Compare the calculation line by line with the independently reviewed reference. Explain differences and identify questions for your reviewers. Neither calculation is assumed correct merely because it already exists.

The supporting record

Trace each material amount and adjustment to the reviewed records and rules. Retain the exact version, approval, workings and open questions so your reviewer can explain the conclusion.

The evaluation scorecard

Record preparation and review effort, assistance, costs and remaining work. Your reviewers decide whether the check is useful enough to repeat.

Every result identifies the reporting period, reviewed version and approval. A breach remains a breach; missing evidence cannot become an assumed answer. Your existing reporting process remains authoritative during evaluation.

These are proposed acceptance criteria, not demonstrated customer results or service guarantees. Confirm the financial and workflow criteria in the signed scope before seeing results.

Agree control cases before kickoff: within and outside the limit, exact equality and a one-cent boundary, missing evidence, and duplicate or contradictory adjustments. Test stale approvals and isolated conditional previews as separate authority checks.

Reconciled inputs

All required schedules reconcile to the agreed source evidence with zero unexplained monetary difference. Missing, duplicated, conflicting or unsupported records produce their agreed stop or incompleteness outcome.

Exact determination

Every financial case matches the independent reference outcome and calculation lines, with zero unexplained discrepancy. The exact comparison decides the outcome; rounded presentation cannot change it.

Enforced authority

Each approval applies only to the reviewed records, treatment and calculation version. Changes require fresh approval; outdated or forged approval is rejected. Previews stay conditional and cannot become approved results.

Reproducible evidence

Each completed result can be reproduced using the records, terms and calculation version used originally. A reviewer traces debt, cash, earnings and every included adjustment to the approved records. Reopening and export require no new AI explanation.

Reviewer independence

For the first check, your reviewer can follow the conclusion and identify open questions from the review pack. The wider pilot adds two repeat review cycles, including an agreed correction and fresh approval, without an AGX engineer editing data or code. Record all assistance.

Measured effort and cost

Report all attempts, failures, assistance, elapsed time and costs against the agreed workload and targets. Separate preparation, calculation and human review time; disclose unavailable cost data.

The pilot tests the specified calculation against the reviewed terms and supplied facts; your signatory retains responsibility for the reporting decision. A correctly identified breach or “cannot determine” result can pass the correctness criteria. It does not establish process value by itself. Unexplained discrepancies or authority failures stop progression even if the workflow appears faster.

1. Accept the pilot

Your sponsor signs the scorecard against the frozen criteria. Financial, authority or data-handling failures block progression. A failed process-value test means stop or agree a new scope.

2. Qualify production analysis

Separately test the real import path, access controls, deployment, retention, monitoring, recovery and release rollback. Repeat agreement and approval checks on the exact production release, with customer security acceptance and an operating owner.

3. Govern changes

Amendments, reporting-perimeter changes, source mappings and calculation changes receive the relevant renewed review. Preserve prior versions and evidence for later review. Agree support commitments from measured workloads.

Automated monitoring and external reporting require separate scope and acceptance evidence. The later planning evaluation below also requires its own qualification; it is not authorized by a calculation approval. Three measurement dates do not establish production reliability, legal compliance or long-term efficiency.

The synthetic CRONUS decision study connects covenant review and the optional payment-and-funding response in one synthetic case. For payment and funding choices, see the separate working-capital pilot.

If planning would be useful, build on the reviewed covenant constraints to find the lowest-cost permitted payment and borrowing plan that meets both the cash floor and projected covenant. The synthetic combined example demonstrates that question. A customer planning evaluation needs its own scope, readiness decision, timetable, acceptance criteria and price. It is not included automatically in the four-week review pilot above.

Approve the planning basis

Supply the reviewed agreement, opening debt and cash, restrictions, contractual earnings forecast, dated receipts and fixed debt service. Identify the contractual test dates and the period needed to check loan repayment and liquidity. Assumptions and uncertainty remain visible.

Define the permitted choices

Confirm supplier-authorized payment dates and quoted borrowing alternatives, including no new borrowing. Capture all material interest, fees, repayments and accounting treatment. Unsupported terms require separate implementation and qualification before the evaluation starts.

Freeze the comparison

Agree the baseline, objective and independent reference plans before seeing results. Include a case where the covenant changes the preferred plan, an unchanged passing plan, no feasible plan and an unresolved assumption. Evaluate all-in cost, minimum unrestricted cash, projected leverage and debt remaining.

Test review and authority

Challenge and resolve an assumption, require fresh approval, and reject stale approval after a covenant change. Conditional previews cannot authorize planning. Export the exact reviewed comparison. Approval authorizes analysis, not payment or borrowing execution.

Judge economic value only against a baseline that satisfies the same agreed limits. Giving up benefit to avoid a breach is a visible trade-off, not a savings claim. Customer forecast accuracy, broader refinancing choices and production operation require their own evidence.