Quick answer: Smart Q&A is a structured, moderated due-diligence Q&A workflow — counterparties submit questions, AI drafts cited answers from your documents, your team reviews, and you publish. It makes you the Disclosure Gatekeeper: nothing reaches a counterparty until you approve it, and every question stays private to your deal team until you publish it. Included on Peony Data Room at $52/admin/month; the structured Advanced Q&A module — with a dedicated answer coordinator and multi-role approval — is on the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month). Ideals, Firmex, and Digify ship no AI in their Q&A.
Answer 300 due diligence questions in days, not weeks
Last updated June 2026
Smart Q&A isn't a chatbot — it's a structured, multi-party workflow. Counterparties submit questions inside the data room. AI drafts answers from your documents with citations. Your team reviews, approves, and responds. Every step is permissioned and auditable. Available on the Data Room plan.
How does Smart Q&A work?
Smart Q&A works in four steps: question, AI draft with citations, team review, approved reply.
Four steps from question to approved answer — with AI doing the heavy lifting and your team in full control.
Investor submits a question
A counterparty — investor, buyer, or auditor — submits a question directly inside the data room. It routes privately to your team for review — nothing is published until you approve it.
AI drafts an answer with citations
Peony instantly reads your documents and drafts a response, citing the exact files and pages. No manual searching required.
Your team reviews the draft
The assigned team member reviews the AI-drafted answer, edits if needed, and approves. Financial questions route to the CFO, legal to counsel.
Approved answer is sent back
Once approved, the answer is delivered to the counterparty inside the data room. Every step is logged in the audit trail.
For larger deals, the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds the structured Advanced Q&A module — an advanced 5-role workflow with question drafters, submitters, auto-assigned experts, answer coordinators, and approvers — so every answer is reviewed by the right person before it reaches the counterparty.
What makes Smart Q&A different from a chatbot?
Smart Q&A is a permissioned, audited workflow that makes you the Disclosure Gatekeeper — not a single-shot chatbot.
AI-drafted answers with citations
Peony reads every document in your data room and drafts a response to each question — citing the exact file and page. Your team reviews instead of researching from scratch.
Moderated, permission-aware Q&A
Every question routes privately to your team — nothing reaches a counterparty until you approve it, and answers go only to the party who asked. To wall off competing bidders completely, isolate each in its own visitor group or room; fully walled per-group Q&A threads are available on Peony Enterprise.
Role-based approval routing
Route answers through the right team members before they reach counterparties. Financial questions go to your CFO, legal questions to counsel. No bottlenecks, no missed approvals.
Compliance-grade audit trail
Every question, AI draft, manual edit, and approval is logged with timestamps and user attribution. A complete record for compliance reviews and post-deal audits.
Replaces email chains and Excel trackers
All Q&A happens in one structured channel inside the data room. No more scattered inboxes, forwarded threads, or version conflicts in shared spreadsheets.
When should I use Smart Q&A?
Use Smart Q&A for M&A diligence, fundraising rounds, and regulatory reviews.
M&A due diligence
Buyers submit 300+ questions during due diligence. AI drafts answers from your financial models, contracts, and corporate documents. Your team reviews and approves. What used to take weeks takes days.
Fundraising Q&A
Investors ask about revenue, burn rate, and cap table. AI finds the answers in your financials and drafts responses with exact citations. Duplicate questions are flagged so you never answer the same thing twice.
Regulatory reviews
Auditors ask compliance questions. AI surfaces the relevant policies and procedures from your document index. Full audit trail for every interaction — every question, draft, and approval logged with timestamps.
Is Peony's Smart Q&A better than Ideals, Firmex, or Digify?
Yes — Peony bundles AI drafts, smart routing, audit trail, and duplicate detection. Ideals/Firmex/Digify either lack AI or wall it behind enterprise add-ons.
| Capability | Peony | Ideals | Firmex | Digify | Datasite |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI drafts | Yes | No | No | No | Enterprise add-on |
| Routing | Yes | Basic | Basic | Limited | Yes |
| Audit trail | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Duplicate detection | Yes (AI) | No | No | No | Manual |
| Price | $52/admin/mo | Custom quote | From $250/mo | From $190/mo | Enterprise |
Need to research your own documents first?
AI Extraction is your internal research tool — ask questions across your data room and get instant, cited answers before the deal starts.
"Every now and then, you come across a product that has a massive positive impact on your business. Peony is one such product."
Panos Moutafis
Founder & CEO, Zenus
Frequently asked questions
Our 4-person deal team fields 50+ buyer diligence questions per week on a $120M sell-side mandate — how does Smart Q&A keep us from drowning?
On Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month), Smart Q&A follows a structured 4-step workflow: your bidders submit questions, AI drafts cited answers from your CIM and diligence files, your team reviews and edits each draft, and approved answers go back to the specific bidder who asked. For your $120M mandate with 50+ weekly questions, this turns a manual email burden into a streamlined queue. AI handles the first-pass research across every document in your room, and your team only reviews — cutting response time from days to hours. For a dedicated Advanced Q&A module on parallel deals, the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds it. Ideals, Firmex, and Digify offer only basic Q&A threads with no AI assistance.
I'm a partner at a mid-market law firm managing a $75M acquisition — can Smart Q&A route financial questions to the CFO and legal questions to my associates automatically?
Yes. On Data Room ($52/admin/month), Smart Q&A drafts a cited answer to each buyer question and holds it for your team to review and approve before it reaches buyer counsel. To automatically route each question to the right member of your deal team based on topic — financial questions to the CFO, legal questions to your associates, operational questions to the COO — and require sign-off through a multi-role approval workflow, the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds the structured Advanced Q&A module. For your $75M acquisition, this eliminates the bottleneck where a single partner triages everything, and ensures every answer is approved by someone with domain expertise.
Our PE fund is raising a $200M continuation vehicle with 30+ LPs submitting duplicate questions — can Smart Q&A detect that?
Yes. On Data Room ($52/admin/month), when an LP submits a question in Smart Q&A, the AI flags semantically similar questions that have already been asked and answered — even if the wording is different. For your $200M CV with 30+ LP cohorts, this prevents your IR team from drafting the same answer about GP economics or valuation methodology multiple times and ensures consistency across all LP groups receiving the same information — critical for ILPA's parity-of-information standard.
We're a boutique advisory staffing a $45M carve-out with just 2 analysts — is Smart Q&A different from AI Extraction?
Yes, they serve different roles. Smart Q&A is for external, structured communication — your bidders submit questions, AI drafts answers from your data room, and your 2-person team reviews before anything goes out. AI Extraction is your internal research tool — your analysts ask questions across documents and get instant, cited answers to prepare for management presentations or surface risks. For your $45M carve-out with a lean team, you use AI Extraction to prepare and Smart Q&A to manage the buyer dialogue. AI document Q&A starts on Business ($30/admin/month); the Smart Q&A workflow is on Data Room ($52/admin/month).
We're running a $90M SaaS competitive auction with 5 separate bidder groups — can each group's questions be kept isolated from the others?
Yes. On Data Room ($52/admin/month), Smart Q&A is a moderated workflow: every question routes privately to your team first, and nothing is published to any counterparty until you approve it — so a strategic buyer's technical questions about your API architecture never reach the PE sponsor unless you choose to share them. To keep competing bidders completely separated, give each its own visitor group (isolated documents, NDA, personalised links, and audit trail) or run a separate room per bidder for fully independent Q&A. Fully isolated per-group Q&A threads — a separate, walled Q&A channel per bidder group inside one room — are available on Peony Enterprise. All communications are secured with AES-256 encryption on SOC 2 Type II certified infrastructure.
I'm coordinating diligence on a $120M sell-side and need to vet every answer before bidders see it — which Q&A mode keeps questions and answers private until I publish them?
On Peony Data Room ($52/admin/month), Smart Q&A keeps every question and AI-drafted answer private to your deal team until you review, approve, and publish it — so nothing reaches a bidder until you choose, and every step is logged in the audit trail. To formalize this with a dedicated answer coordinator and the advanced 5-role workflow (question drafter, submitter, auto-assigned expert, answer coordinator, and approver) — ensuring the designated person signs off before any answer is released — the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds the structured Advanced Q&A module. For your $120M sell-side, this lets you control disclosure timing and keep a defensible record of exactly who saw which answer and when.
I'm GP counsel on a $150M fund and our compliance team needs a full audit trail of every Q&A exchange with LPs — does Smart Q&A produce that?
Yes. On Data Room ($52/admin/month), Peony logs every interaction in Smart Q&A with timestamps and user attribution: every question submitted by an LP, every AI draft generated, every manual edit by your IR team, and every approval. For your $150M fund, this compliance-grade audit trail satisfies regulatory review requirements and post-deal audits. Your compliance team can export the full record at any time. Ideals, Firmex, and Digify lack AI-powered Q&A and offer only basic thread history without this level of auditability.
Our boutique M&A shop runs $30M-$80M mandates — how much does Smart Q&A cost versus hiring another analyst to manage buyer questions?
Peony Data Room is $52/admin/month — so your team pays $208/month (4 admins) for Smart Q&A with AI-drafted answers, duplicate detection, and full audit trails. That is $2,496/year. A junior analyst costs $75,000-$100,000/year and still cannot draft cited answers from 500 documents in seconds. If you need role-based routing and a multi-role approval workflow, the Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds the structured Advanced Q&A module. For your $30M-$80M mandates, Smart Q&A replaces the manual question-routing work that consumes 10+ analyst hours per week. Datasite charges enterprise pricing for comparable workflows, and Ideals, Firmex, and Digify have no AI in their Q&A modules at all.
I'm a PE associate managing ongoing LP communications on a $300M fund — can Smart Q&A handle quarterly inquiries, not just deal-specific diligence?
Yes. Smart Q&A on Data Room ($52/admin/month) works for any structured Q&A workflow — not just M&A diligence. For your $300M fund, your LPs can submit quarterly questions about portfolio performance, fee calculations, or distribution waterfalls, and AI drafts answers from the documents in your LP data room. Your IR team reviews and approves before responses go out. Over time, the system learns from prior approved answers, so recurring questions about fund terms or reporting methodology get faster and more consistent with each cycle.
Could the AI ever send an answer to a bidder before my team has reviewed it?
No. Smart Q&A never auto-publishes. The AI only drafts — every answer is held until a human on your team reviews it, edits if needed, and approves it, and in Advanced mode your designated answer coordinator is the final gate before anything reaches a counterparty. You are the Disclosure Gatekeeper: nothing is disclosed to a bidder, LP, or auditor without your explicit approval, and every draft, edit, and approval is logged in the audit trail. The AI accelerates the research; your team keeps full control of what gets said and when.
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