An associate opens a draft brief before a buyer call. Revenue is there, EBITDA is there, and the narrative reads well. Then the partner asks whether the EBITDA number includes the proposed adjustments. The brief does not say. Finding the answer means reopening the presentation, finding the model and working out which version the draft used. The writing was quick; the checking still takes the afternoon.
That is an illustrative situation, but it exposes a useful design test. The value of an AI-generated deal brief depends on how easily a reviewer can establish what each statement rests on. A source reference should be part of the working document from the beginning. Adding a list of filenames at the end is rarely enough.
01
Why start with the statement, then its evidence?
Take a fictional claim: FY25 revenue was £12.4m. A useful reference identifies the workbook, the version, the sheet and the relevant cell or range. It also records the reporting period, currency and whether the figure is actual, budget or forecast. For a PDF, the equivalent might be the document version, printed page number and table heading. A reference to Financial model.xlsx leaves too much work to the person checking it.
The brief should let a reviewer open that evidence directly where the source system permits it. Where a deep link is unavailable, show enough information to locate the passage without searching the whole file. Keep the claim and reference together when the document is exported. A reference that disappears in the PowerPoint or Word version does not help the partner preparing for a call.
02
Is a citation proof, or a route to checking?
NIST's Generative AI Profile identifies confabulation as a risk, including confidently stated errors and false citations. Giving a model documents does not remove the need to test whether its statements are supported by them. A link can point to a real page while the sentence beside it misrepresents what that page says.
Build checks around the claims the team actually uses. Can the referenced passage support the number? Is the currency right? Has a percentage been confused with an absolute value? Does the source say reported EBITDA while the draft says adjusted EBITDA? Some checks can be rules, such as comparing an extracted value with a workbook cell. Others need a reviewer. The interface should make both kinds of check visible without presenting an unearned confidence score as a substitute.
03
Why keep disagreements in view?
A management presentation and a later workbook may give different figures. A summary that silently chooses one makes the disagreement harder to discover. The draft should show the competing values, their dates and their sources, then ask the reviewer to resolve them. If the firm has an agreed rule for which source takes precedence, apply it explicitly and record that rule.
Missing evidence deserves the same treatment. If the materials do not establish whether a customer contract can be transferred, the brief should say that the question remains open. It can identify the relevant document for review, but it should not fill the gap with an assumption. In deal work, a well-placed open question is often more useful than another paragraph of fluent prose.
04
Why are document versions part of the answer?
A brief is a snapshot of the materials available when it was prepared. Record that snapshot: the source versions, the time of preparation and the draft version the reviewer approved. If a financial model changes later, flag the statements that used it for another review. Do not silently replace the numbers in a document that has already been signed off.
A link to a living file and a record of the version used serve different purposes. The link helps someone navigate. The version record explains what the team relied on at the time. Agree how versions or permitted snapshots will be retained, how long they are needed and who can access them. That decision belongs alongside the workflow's data-handling arrangements.
05
How do you make review a short, explicit piece of work?
The first useful pilot is one recurring brief with a defined reviewer and a small set of source documents. Give the reviewer a list of factual statements, each with its evidence and any exceptions. Keep editorial suggestions separate from unresolved factual questions so that correcting the tone does not accidentally mark a number as checked.
The following example describes a review record, rather than a claim about an existing Verdalyze product:
- Statement: FY25 revenue was £12.4m; basis: actuals in GBP.
- Evidence: financial model, version 03, FY25 actuals sheet, cell F18.
- Exception: presentation version 02 contains a different revenue figure.
- Review: named owner confirms the intended source or requests a correction.
- Release: the approved draft and its source record are stored together.
Evaluate the pilot on representative materials, including scanned pages, duplicated filenames, missing information and conflicting versions. Measure the time to a checked brief, the corrections required and the effort to resolve exceptions. Those observations tell you more than the speed of producing the first draft.
06
Why should access follow the evidence?
A source-linked brief can reveal confidential information even to someone who cannot open its links. Apply access controls to the draft and the evidence used to produce it. A restricted document's contents should not appear in an unrestricted summary. The same principle applies to exports, notifications and the retained source record.
Agree where processing happens, which providers handle the material and how copies are retained or deleted. A deployment in the firm's own environment may be appropriate, but it is one possible arrangement. Secure, private handling needs to cover the complete data flow. Once those boundaries are clear, the brief can do the job it was meant to do: give a person a first version that is quick to verify and ready to improve.
Written by Ilyas Berel and Shihab Berel, Verdalyze. Published 9 October 2026.
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