Procurement overview
Procurement work covers buying things from suppliers: building a cart of items you need, sending requests for quote (RFQs) to suppliers, comparing what they come back with, and turning the best response into a purchase order.
What lives under Procurement
- Add to Cart — pick the items you want to source and tick the suppliers to send each one to.
- RFQ Cart — review the cart and send the request out to suppliers.
- Enquiries — the Procurement Enquiries list of every RFQ you have already sent.
- Purchase Orders — purchase orders raised on suppliers, with edit, send, and history.
Two follow-up screens help you chase suppliers who have not responded. Both are reached from the options dropdown on their parent screen:
- Vendor Follow-Up for chasing suppliers on open RFQs (opened from the Procurement Enquiries options menu under Vendor Follow-up).
- Purchase Order Follow-Up for chasing suppliers on issued purchase orders (opened from the Purchase Orders options menu under PO Follow-up).
A typical procurement's life
- Decide what you need to buy. Open Add to Cart and add each item with quantity, makes, description, and the suppliers you want to send the line to.
- Open RFQ Cart and send the cart to suppliers.
- Track who has replied in Procurement Enquiries. Each RFQ row opens a modal listing every supplier you sent it to, and each supplier opens its own vendor detail page.
- If suppliers go quiet, send a chase from Vendor Follow-Up.
- When you pick a winning quote, generate a purchase order from the supplier's response.
- Track and chase the purchase orders from Purchase Orders and Purchase Order Follow-Up.
Before you start
- The supplier and contact person must already exist. See Suppliers and Supplier contacts.
- The product heads and codes must exist. See Products.
- The brand or Make you want must be available on the relevant suppliers — see Manufacturers.
Common questions
Do I have to send the same RFQ to several suppliers?
Yes. Each line in the cart can be ticked against several suppliers, so you can compare responses side by side.
How do I link procurement back to a customer enquiry?
Open the customer's enquiry from the Enquiry bank, then choose the cart action from its actions menu — see View an enquiry. The cart is pre-filled with the enquiry's items.