You will be able to pull consistent information from several documents into one table you can trust.
Once Hui Min had signed her tenancy agreement, her next job was insurance for her belongings. She collected three quotes for home contents cover, each a PDF of between six and fourteen pages, uploaded all three and asked which was best. The assistant wrote four paragraphs. The first quote was described in terms of its premium and excess, the second in terms of what it covered for laptops and phones, and the third mostly in terms of the insurer's claims process. Each description was reasonable on its own. Side by side, they could not be compared at all, because no two of them talked about the same things.
Comparing documents with an assistant goes wrong in a predictable way: it reads each document for whatever stands out in that document. The fix is to decide in advance what every document will be read for.
Before you upload anything, write down the questions you want answered about every document. These become the columns of a table. For insurance quotes, Hui Min chose annual premium, excess per claim, sum insured for contents, cover for laptops and phones outside the home, main exclusions and cancellation terms. For supplier quotes you might choose price, delivery time, minimum order, payment terms and warranty. For job offers, salary, leave, notice period, bonus terms and probation length.
The columns do two things. They make sure every document is read for the same facts, so the rows can be compared. And they force you to decide what matters to you before the documents start telling you what to care about. A brochure that leads with its claims app will pull the model towards the claims app unless you have said that the excess matters more.
Keep the columns to the facts that will actually drive your decision. Six to eight is usually plenty. A table with twenty columns is hard to check and harder to read.
Then ask for the table in a specific form: "Make a table with one row per document and these columns. In each cell, give the value and the page number it came from. If a document does not state something, leave the cell blank and write 'not stated'. Do not estimate or fill in typical values."
The page numbers carry the method from lesson 5.2, Make it quote and point to the source, into the table. Every cell becomes something you can check in seconds. The blanks matter as much as the values. A blank cell saying "not stated" for one insurer's cover for laptops outside the home is real information: it tells you to ask, rather than assume the cover is the same as the others. A model left to its own devices will often fill that cell with whatever is typical, and a typical value in a comparison table looks exactly like a real one.
Three short quotes can usually go in at once. A larger set, or very long documents, is better handled in pieces. Upload one or two documents, get their rows, check them, and then do the next batch with the same column instructions. Combine the rows into one table at the end, either yourself or by pasting the checked rows back in and asking for them to be merged.
This avoids the problems from lesson 5.1, What happens when you upload a file. With many long files at once, some may be cut short or only searched in parts, and the rows for the later documents tend to be thinner. Smaller batches keep each document fully in view. They also make mistakes easier to trace, because you know which batch a row came from.
A comparison table looks authoritative. It is neat, complete and lined up, and that neatness makes it easy to trust more than it deserves. A wrong value in a single cell can flip a decision, and nothing about the table will tell you which cell is wrong.
So before you rely on it, decide which cells actually drive your choice and check each one against the page cited. Hui Min's decision turned on the premium, the excess and the cover for her laptop outside the flat, so she checked those nine cells, three per insurer. Eight matched. One premium in the table was the figure before a promotional discount that was listed on a later page. It changed the order of the three quotes on price.
Checking nine cells took her about five minutes. The rest of the table she treated as a guide, useful for spotting questions to ask but not something to decide on without a look at the source.
The method works for any set of documents describing the same kind of thing. Gather two or three quotes, brochures or offers you are actually weighing up, and before you upload them, write down the five or six columns that matter most to your decision.
Upload two or three quotes or brochures for the same kind of product and produce a comparison table with sources for each cell.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).