Resources · Comparison
Lunar8Ops vs Microsoft Copilot for tenders and payment claims
Keep Copilot. It is better than this at finding what is already in your SharePoint, Outlook and Teams, and it comes inside a licence you already pay for. What it cannot do is hold a certified rate schedule and refuse a figure that contradicts it, produce a record of who approved what, or start work before someone asks.
Last reviewed
Most subcontractors this size already run Microsoft 365, and Copilot indexes the whole tenancy (SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams) permission-trimmed, at no ingestion effort, from a licence that is already being paid for. Gemini does the same inside Google Workspace. The relevant fact is not whether Copilot is good. It is that it does not have to be better; it has to be already there.
So the honest starting point is that the search fight is over and we did not win it. This reads a deliberately small set: your certified rates, a few documents you have already sent, and about twenty numbers you confirmed once. It is not trying to read your company.
The difference is not how much either one has read. It is what happens to a number on the way out, and whether anyone can tell you afterwards who signed for it.
Where Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini wins
What we are not better at.
It is already there, and already paid for
No second subscription, no vendor check, no procurement conversation, no new login for the office. For a business that writes a handful of documents a year and does not argue about the figures in them, that is the right answer and we would rather say so than sell you a second tool.
It searches everything you own. We search almost none of it
Ask Copilot where that specification ended up, or what was agreed in a Teams thread in March, and it will find it across the whole tenancy with permissions respected. This holds a small deliberate set and cannot answer that question at all. That is a genuine capability gap and it is not one we are working on.
It works inside the tools already open on the desk
Drafting happens in Word and Outlook, where the work already happens. There is no new window to learn and nothing extra for anyone to remember. That is a real advantage for ad-hoc writing, and it is why the argument below is about the documents that repeat rather than the ones that do not.
Side by side
Where the difference actually is.
| Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini | Lunar8Ops | |
|---|---|---|
| Your rates and prices | Indexed like any other file. Ask for your standard hourly rate and it can return three answers from three different years and let you choose, because the grounding is everything it can see and the model decides. | Held as a certified table. A figure that contradicts it is removed before the model ever sees it: a comparison between two numbers, not the model being careful, so it cannot come out wrong on a bad day. |
| How much it has read | Your whole tenancy: SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams, permission-trimmed and kept current for you. | A small deliberate set. Breadth is the thing we are worse at, and widening it would cost the precision the rest of this depends on. |
| Who approved the document | No record. Nothing in the design is pointed at that question. | Every document carries who approved it, when, and against which figures. |
| Work that arrives while you are on site | Nothing happens. It answers when it is asked, and it never notices anything on a Tuesday. | A rule in plain words acts on what arrives, does the work, and leaves the draft waiting for a person. |
| What comes out | A chat answer, or a rough draft in Word that somebody formats. | PDF or Word on your letterhead, in the format your own past submissions used. |
| When a claim is disputed | It can find the emails. It cannot tell you which price was used or who signed for it. | The sign-off trail is the artifact: who approved which document containing which figures, and when. |
| What it costs | Bundled into a licence you are most likely already paying for. | A separate subscription. Below a certain volume of repeating documents, Copilot is the cheaper answer and stays that way. |
Choosing
Stay with Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini when
- –The question is “where is that document” or “what did we agree in March”.
- –You write a handful of documents a year and nobody contests the figures in them.
- –Nobody outside the drafter has to sign off what goes out.
Lunar8Ops earns its place when
- –A wrong rate in a claim becomes a contract, and somebody has to be able to say which rate was used.
- –A head contractor asks who approved the number in that claim.
- –The same five or six document types come around every month.
- –The work arrives at 4:47 on a Thursday and is still sitting there on Monday.
Fair questions
On this comparison.
We already pay for Copilot. Why would we pay for this as well?
Keep paying for Copilot. It does a job this does not, over everything you own, and this is not a search tool. Ask it what your standard hourly rate is and it will find three answers from three different years and let you pick, because the grounding is everything it can see. This one won't, because a figure that contradicts your rate schedule is removed before the model sees it. And when a head contractor asks who approved the number in that claim, Copilot has no answer to that question. It was never built to have one.
Isn't Microsoft going to add all of this eventually?
They might, and there is one specific signal we watch rather than pretending otherwise: approval-gated, governed document workflows shipping into Copilot for small business. Copilot getting better at drafting is already assumed and does not change the argument either way. If Microsoft ships the refusal and the record, that is a real problem for us, and you should hear it from us rather than work it out later.
Can it use what Copilot has already indexed?
Not through Copilot. You can connect email or file storage so it notices when one of the numbers it holds looks like it has moved, but it does not index your tenancy and it is not trying to. It works from a small set you hand it once (a price list and a few documents you have already sent), which is why setup is twenty minutes rather than a project.
What about Gemini in Google Workspace?
The same answer, line for line. Gemini indexes Drive, Gmail and Docs from inside a licence you already hold, it is better at that than this will be, and it has no certified rate table, no refusal, no approver and no sign-off trail. Nothing in this comparison changes if you swap the names.
Judge it on your own material.
Tell us your company name and we will send back one page on what you have already published: the claims a shortlister cannot check from your own material, and what they would need to see instead. You send us nothing, and it is useful whether or not you ever reply.