# Buy smarter, from the right supplier

> Purchase & suppliers — part of the Intigra business platform.

Build a cart of what you need, send one request to several suppliers, compare their quotes side by side, and turn the best one into a purchase order. Every supplier, every chase, and every order in one place.

## From a need, to received and approved

One straight line from the moment you decide to buy something to the day the goods are checked in. Nothing is re-typed along the way, and every step stays on record with who did it and when.

1. **Build a cart of what you need** — Add each item with its quantity, accepted makes, HSN code and a description. The supplier list narrows itself to vendors who deal in that product head and brand, so you simply tick the ones you want to ask. You can also start the cart pre-filled from a customer enquiry or a confirmed sales order.
2. **Send one request to every supplier** — Review one row per supplier, set a closing date, attach any shared drawings or datasheets, pick the email account to send from, and release the whole request in one click. Every supplier is emailed at the same moment, so their replies compare fairly on the same footing.
3. **Suppliers reply with their rates** — Each supplier gets a secure link to a portal where they fill their prices, tax, discount and terms, then submit. Their reply lands straight against their entry on your screen. If they email their rates instead, the AI reads the mail, finds the right RFQ, and pre-fills the quotation for you to check.
4. **Pick a winner and raise the order** — Open the supplier with the best quote and generate a purchase order with the priced lines already filled in. Add transport, packing or other charges with the correct tax, set your terms, preview the PDF, then send it from the email account you choose.
5. **Goods arrive and are approved** — A sent order is locked from edits and tracked from then on. Chase slow suppliers, watch the stock arrival ledger fill as goods come in, and see each order move from sent to partially arrived to fully arrived as your inventory team checks them in.

## One purchase trail, instead of scattered chases

Most buying drifts across WhatsApp threads, phone calls and loose paper. Here it lives in one place, on the record, with the same team and email you already use.

### The scattered way

- Rates arrive on WhatsApp, over calls and on scraps of paper, with no single place to compare them.
- You re-type the same item list into a fresh message for every supplier you want to ask.
- Chasing a slow supplier means scrolling old chats to remember who you already pinged.
- Quotes come in different formats, so comparing price and delivery fairly is guesswork.
- Once a PO goes out it lives in someone's sent mail, and nobody else can see where the goods are.
- When a supplier disappoints, there is no record to look back on the next time you buy.

### With Intigra

- Every supplier's rate lands against their entry on one screen, lined up side by side for a fair comparison.
- Build the item list once in the cart and send it to every supplier together in a single click.
- Follow-up screens list exactly who has not replied, so you chase the right people without scrolling.
- Suppliers quote in the same card-based form, so price, tax, discount and delivery days compare like for like.
- Sent POs are tracked for the whole team, with arrivals booked against them as goods come in.
- The vendor scorecard remembers how each supplier performed, built straight from your real orders.

## See which suppliers earn their place, and where money is stuck

*Reports built from your data*

Two reports turn the buying you already do into a clear picture. The vendor scorecard grades each supplier from your real RFQs, quotes, orders and arrivals, with no extra data entry. The supply-chain report shows what is moving, what is stuck and what is actually making money. Both honour the date range at the top and print to a branded PDF in one click.

- Each vendor gets a 0-100 grade and a letter on price, delivery, responsiveness and repeat business
- Delivery times are judged against each item’s own norm, so a slow item never unfairly drags a supplier down
- Win-rate is shown for context but never affects the grade
- A leaderboard ranks every vendor; click one to drill into its full scorecard
- Supply-chain KPIs cover stock value, arrived and dispatched quantity, profit, margin and products selling below cost
- Pending arrivals and pending dispatch lists show what is still owed, with its value and age, and dead stock is flagged
- Profit uses first-in first-out costing, replaying each product’s real purchase and sale history

## The full purchase & suppliers toolkit

From the cart and the supplier portal to follow-ups, purchase orders and arrivals. Every one of these is built in and working today.

### The cart and sending an RFQ

- **Add to cart with a live supplier shortlist** — Two panes side by side — an item form on the left and a supplier list on the right that narrows itself to vendors dealing in that product head and make as you pick them, so you only ever see suppliers who can actually quote.
- **Set quantity, makes, HSN and a description per line** — Each cart line carries its quantity, the makes you will accept, its HSN code and a rich-text description, with the HSN filling in automatically from the product code’s master record.
- **Pick a specific contact person per supplier** — When a supplier has several people, choose the right contact for this request, so the email and the portal access go to exactly the person who should answer.
- **Start a cart from an enquiry or sales order** — Pre-fill the cart product by product from a customer enquiry or a confirmed sales order, skipping any line you do not need to source, so the buying flows on from the selling.
- **Tune each supplier on its own** — Open a supplier row to set attachments and extra CC or BCC for that one vendor, layered on top of your firm-wide defaults, when a single supplier needs something different.
- **Closing date and shared attachments** — Set the reply deadline and attach drawings or specifications that ride with the whole request, with a firm default closing date that can fill itself in, measured from the moment you actually send.
- **Send the whole request in one click** — Pick the from-address, confirm the count of suppliers being mailed in a confirmation modal, preview the final CC and BCC, then release — the cart locks and clears and every supplier appears ready to track.

### Quotes and the supplier portal

- **A self-serve portal for your suppliers** — Each supplier gets a secure link in the RFQ email — no signup, no password. They view the enquiry, fill their rates in a clear card-based form and submit, and it lands straight on your screen.
- **The whole supplier team shares one view** — Everyone at the supplier sees the company’s enquiries and orders, but only the contact an enquiry was actually sent to can respond to it, so responsibility stays clear.
- **Per-line rate, tax and discount in any currency** — Suppliers quote a rate, tax percent and discount on each line, in the currency they work in, and the form shows the calculated net rate as they type.
- **Drafts and revisions until the RFQ closes** — A supplier can save a half-filled quotation and come back to it, and can revise an already submitted quote any time before the closing date, so late corrections never need a phone call.
- **Read a line’s enquiry description while filling** — An info icon next to each product code reveals that line’s original enquiry description on hover, so whoever fills the rates can confirm they are pricing the right thing.
- **Overall terms and per-line remarks on a quote** — Alongside each line a supplier sets a remark and a no-bid flag, and once across the whole quote they record currency, delivery days, validity days, payment terms and any additional notes.
- **Fill a quotation on a supplier’s behalf** — When a supplier phones or emails their rates, anyone with permission can record them against the RFQ, so the comparison stays complete even when a vendor does not use the portal.
- **AI reads supplier emails for you** — When a supplier emails their rates, the AI works out which RFQ they are replying to and which rate belongs to which line, re-checks everything against live records, and pre-fills the quotation for you to verify and save.
- **A company-wide supplier dashboard** — Suppliers land on a dashboard of total, pending and active enquiries, a twelve-month trend chart and quick links, aggregated across all their contact people for the chosen date range.
- **Closed enquiry links open read-only** — When an enquiry is closed, the supplier’s link still opens, but on a read-only view of their history, so the record is preserved while new submissions are blocked.

### Purchase orders

- **Generate a PO only from a priced line** — The Generate Purchase Order action appears only once a supplier has at least one priced, non no-bid line, so an empty or all-no-bid quote can never become an order by accident.
- **Raise a purchase order directly** — For a repeat order from a known supplier, create a PO straight from the Purchase Orders list, picking the supplier, contact and lines without going through an RFQ at all.
- **Choose the columns on the PO PDF** — Decide which columns appear on the purchase order document, with a firm-wide default so every PO looks consistent unless you change it for one order.
- **Supplier-specific or firm-default terms** — Save default PO terms for vendors with special agreements and fall back to your firm default for everyone else, so the right terms print without re-typing.
- **Additional charges with fixed tax** — Add transport, packing or other charges from a list the firm owner manages, each with its tax rate fixed by type and an optional remark, summarised read-only on the PO.
- **Optional auto-numbering on send** — If your firm uses auto-numbering, the PO number is locked on the form and the real number is assigned at the moment the PO is actually sent, keeping your sequence gap-free.
- **Preview the PDF before it goes out** — View the PO PDF with your current subject, terms and chosen columns before sending, so what the supplier receives is exactly what you saw.
- **Save subject and terms as a draft** — Persist a custom subject line, edited terms and column choices without sending, so a part-prepared PO is waiting for you the next time you open the send flow.
- **Attach documents to a purchase order** — Upload supporting files such as drawings or signed copies against a purchase order, up to twenty megabytes in total, so everything tied to that order lives in one place.
- **Save a default status filter on the list** — Pin a status like Sent or Partially Arrived as the default for the Purchase Orders list, remembered on this device and applied every time the page opens.

### Following up, tracking and arrivals

- **Chase suppliers on open RFQs** — Vendor Follow-Up lists every supplier who has not yet replied; tick several rows and send chases together using your firm’s follow-up template, with replied rows dropping off and each row re-checked before sending.
- **Chase suppliers on issued orders** — PO Follow-Up does the same for purchase orders that have been sent but not yet acknowledged or delivered, with POs dropping off once acknowledged, delivered or cancelled.
- **Track every RFQ and response** — Procurement Enquiries lists every request you have sent, searchable by supplier, contact, product head, code and status, with each row opening a modal of every supplier on that RFQ and their quote, terms and delivery days.
- **Close, reopen and see the history** — Close an enquiry for one vendor or the whole RFQ with an optional reason, cancelling open invitations, and reopen it later to restore each vendor to its previous state, all kept on a who-did-what timeline.
- **Choose the email account you send from** — RFQs, follow-ups and purchase orders all go out from an email account you pick at send time, limited to the accounts your admin has allowed for that kind of message.
- **Send history with retry for failures** — Every send is logged against the RFQ or PO, and a failed attempt can be retried from the history, so a flaky mail server never leaves you guessing whether it went.
- **Stock arrival ledger against each PO** — Open the full history of arrivals booked against a purchase order, each row showing the date, invoice number, products, quantities, total and status, with its own column controls.
- **Delete protection once stock arrives** — A purchase order can no longer be deleted once any goods have been received against it, keeping the audit trail intact for orders that are partially or fully arrived.
- **Live delivery status for suppliers** — As your inventory team approves arrivals, each order shows pending, partially delivered or delivered on the supplier’s portal, derived automatically and never editable by them.

### Supplier book and shared masters

- **Keep a clean supplier book** — Hold every supplier with their name, address and tax details across Basic Info, Business & Tax and Makes & Categories tabs, and add as many contact persons as a vendor has.
- **Tag the makes and categories a supplier deals in** — Mark which brands and product categories each supplier handles, which is exactly what powers the live shortlist when you build a cart, so the right vendors surface on their own.
- **Contacts in use are protected from deletion** — A contact person linked to enquiries cannot be removed, so the trail of who an RFQ was sent to is never broken by tidying up the supplier book.
- **Manufacturers shared across the firm** — The makes list is kept unique and shared firm-wide, so shortlists stay accurate; add a brand once, attach documents to it, and rename it with care because it shows everywhere.
- **A brand in use is protected** — A make that suppliers or products rely on cannot be deleted by accident, and renaming asks for confirmation because the change ripples across every shortlist that uses it.
- **One-click branded PDF of reports** — The vendor scorecard and the supply-chain view both print to a polished PDF carrying your firm branding and a footer noting who printed it, straight from the current view.

> “Source against a customer enquiry or order, receive the goods into inventory, and chase suppliers with the same team and email accounts you already use.”

## Related modules

- [Inventory](https://intigra.app/modules/inventory.md)
- [Enquiries & quotations](https://intigra.app/modules/enquiries.md)
- [Team, HR & expenses](https://intigra.app/modules/team.md)