Gatekeeper is the only unified platform for managing third-party compliance, contracting, and spend — screening every partner upfront, accelerating time-to-agreement, and continuously monitoring for risk and savings — so companies stay protected and compliant, reduce costs and move fast.
This introductory article will cover some key terms and explain Gatekeeper's data structure to help you navigate around.
Key Terms
| Term |
Definition |
| Contract | Contract records are the source of truth for your agreements. They contain key metadata such as the start date, category, and annual value, as well as any related documents. |
| Vendor | Vendor records contain the details of the third parties that provide goods or services to your company. They may be known by another term such as suppliers or third parties in your organisation. |
| Team | The business units within your organisation. These are typically aligned with departments such as Legal, Finance or Procurement. |
| Category | Categories are a way of organising your contracts into relevant groups and represent the broad range of services being offered. They support spend analysis and help identify savings opportunities. |
| Entity | Entities are the legal parties within your organisation that enter into contracts. You may have a single entity or multiple. |
| The Vault | The Vault is the central hub that stores your contract, vendor, team, category and entity records in dedicated list views. It may also be referred to as the repository. |
| Workflows | Workflows are structured, repeatable processes for managing contracts and vendors. They help collect data, automate approvals, and maintain an audit trail for tasks such as contract renewals or vendor onboarding. |
Note: You can amend the labels for these terms within your Gatekeeper tenant to match your organisation’s terminology. As a result, your tenant may display different labels, for example, Vendors may appear as Third Parties. The terms listed above are used throughout all Knowledge Base articles.
Data Structure
The following diagram illustrates how Gatekeeper structures core data:
- A contract must be linked to an entity, category, team and vendor.
- Entities, categories, teams and vendors can be linked to many contracts.
This structure can be used to control user access to contract records in Gatekeeper. For example, you can restrict a user's visibility to only the contracts assigned to their team. This helps tailor visibility to suit different roles and responsibilities.
Note: For further details on what is included in the Gatekeeper core data model, please see our Core Data Model Tables.