Ask a plain-English question across every document in a data room and get an answer with cited page numbers. "What's the customer concentration?" "What does the IP assignment clause say?" "What was Q3 2025 ARR?" Type it, Peony returns the answer and links to the exact pages it came from.

Peony has two distinct Q&A surfaces. This page covers AI document Q&A — the AI that reads your files and answers your questions. The separate room-level Visitor Q&A module lets outside reviewers post questions to your deal team; that lives on its own page: Visitor Q&A.

Plan Availability

AI document Q&A — the AI chat covered on this page — is on Business and above. On Free, the panel prompts you to upgrade ("AI chat is available on Business and above"). Usage scales by tier: Business gets the base allotment, Data Room 5x, Deal Team 10x, Enterprise custom.
Visitor Q&A (the room-level module where reviewers post questions) is on Data Room and above.
The Advanced Q&A workflow (assign an expert, route to an approver, publish once approved) is a Deal Team feature.

What It Does

Open the AI chat inside any data room — it appears as the Chat sidebar ("Ask anything...") — type a question, and Peony reads across every document to answer. This is the AI document Q&A surface, separate from the room's Q&A tab (that tab is the Visitor Q&A workspace where human reviewers post questions). Each answer comes with citations — the source document and page number. Click a citation to jump directly there.

It's built for two audiences:

Sellers stress-test their own room ("what does our deck say about gross margin?") before buyers do.
Buyers move through thousands of pages without opening every file.

When a reviewer asks a question through the Visitor Q&A flow, they can be dropped directly on the cited page from the notification email.

How to Use It

Open a data room, open the AI Chat sidebar ("Ask anything..."), and type a question in plain English.

Check the citations. Every one links to a specific page in a specific document, so you can verify rather than trust.

Your chat history stays in the AI Chat sidebar so you can revisit earlier answers. If a buyer wants the full session record at deal close, use the analytics Export on the Analytics tab — Peony exports viewer and session activity as a CSV.

What It's Good At

Summarizing long documents. "Summarize the key points" on a 200-page deck or 50-page contract.
Finding specific clauses. "What's the IP assignment language?" returns the text and the page.
Cross-document comparisons. "How does 2024 P&L revenue compare to the 2025 forecast?"
Extracting specific numbers. "What was Q3 2025 ARR?" "How many employees?"

What It's Not Good At

File editing. AI Q&A is read-only — it can find, summarize, and cite, but cannot edit documents inside the data room. In-room editing is underway.

Advanced Q&A Workflow (Deal Team)

For live M&A and fundraising, counterparties can submit questions through the room and your team approves responses before they go back. Assign each question to an expert to draft the answer and to an approver to sign off; the AI drafts a cited answer, your team reviews and edits, and the approved response is published to the reviewer. Nothing reaches the buyer until an approver signs off. This is the "CFO-in-the-loop" flow that replaces the email back-and-forth most deals still run on.

This assign-and-route workflow (labelled Advanced Q&A module on the plan comparison) is a Deal Team feature. On Data Room, Visitor Q&A is basic only — questions and vetted answers, without the expert/approver routing.

One setup note: the Advanced Q&A workflow must be assigned to the data room root link, not a sub-link. If you see "Selected link assignment must use the data room root link.", reassign it to the root.

How AI Credits Work

AI features run on a credit balance. Two things spend credits:

Document processing on upload. When you add files, Peony processes them so the AI can read across them. More documents — and larger ones — consume more credits. This happens even if you never open the AI Chat sidebar, which is why a fresh upload can draw down your balance before you've asked a single question.
AI questions. Each question you ask spends credits to generate the cited answer.

Your allotment scales with your plan (Data Room is 5x the Business base, Deal Team 10x, Enterprise custom) and resets monthly. If you run out, you can top up from AI Credits in the account menu, or wait for the next monthly reset. Heavy usage in the prior cycle can mean a longer wait before the reset lands.

New File Notifications (Deal Team)

On Deal Team and above, the data room Settings tab has a New file notifications card: "Email recipients a daily summary when new files, agreements, or links are added." Turn it on so invite-only recipients get a once-a-day digest whenever something new lands in the room — no need to ping them manually every time you add a document. This is a data-room setting, not a Q&A setting, but it pairs well with an active Q&A room where new files keep arriving.

Privacy and Model Info

AI document Q&A uses a production LLM with enterprise data-handling agreements. Document content is sent at query time to generate answers but is not used to train any model, and the provider is contractually prevented from retaining it.

Your chat history is retained in the AI Chat sidebar so you can revisit earlier answers. There is no separate Q&A transcript export today; the analytics Export on the Analytics tab covers viewer and session activity, not a full question-and-answer log.

Auto-indexing is a separate feature and runs entirely on Peony's own infrastructure — no external LLM. See AI Auto-Indexing.

Common Questions

Why were my AI credits used when I never opened the AI?

Credits are consumed by document processing on upload, not only by chat. Every file you add gets processed so the AI can read it, and more or larger documents draw down more credits. If your balance dropped after an upload, that is expected. Top up from AI Credits in the account menu or wait for the monthly reset.

Can I turn AI Q&A on for viewers, or is it admin-only?

You control it per group. In the group's security settings there is an AI document Q&A toggle — turn it on to let that group's viewers ask the AI questions, or leave it off to keep AI Q&A to your own team.

The Q&A button isn't showing in the room even though Q&A is allowed. Where is it?

The visitor question entry point sits in the top bar of the data room viewer (the Ask a question control). If reviewers can't see it, open the data room Settings tab and confirm Visitor Q&A is on (Data Room plan and above), then check the group's AI document Q&A toggle. Posted questions appear in the Q&A workspace for your team.

Can I keep questions private between groups?

Groups never see each other's questions, and on the Advanced Q&A workflow (Deal Team) an answer stays private until an assigned approver signs off. Private, threaded Q&A with expert/approver routing is a Deal Team feature — there is no lower-tier toggle for it. On Data Room, Visitor Q&A is basic: questions show anonymously to other viewers in the same group, and admins can vet AI answers before they reach the buyer.

How do I delete our test questions?

Open the Q&A workspace and use the delete control on the question. (A brief redesign hid this control; it is back in place.)

I got "Selected link assignment must use the data room root link." What now?

The Advanced Q&A workflow can only be assigned to the data room root link, not a sub-link. Reassign it to the root link and the error clears.