Response Items in Sourcing Events

This article provides an overview of different response items (or formats) available in the Sourcing module. If you first want to learn how to create a sourcing event, see article here: GUIDE: Creating a Sourcing Event.

Response Items are the things you need vendors to provide when they submit their response. This is configured as part of Step 3: Response in the Event Setup.

There are currently 5 different types of Response Items that you can add to a Sourcing Event (depending on your Supplios plan and account-level settings):

Form: A custom form or survey for suppliers that you can build with a drag-and-drop editor.
Quote Sheet: An "Excel-style" list of parts/items (or a full BOM) where you need price/lead-time or other similar standard quote information from suppliers.
Document Upload: A request for suppliers to upload a file/files.
Document Template: A template file that you provide to suppliers, which they then fill out and submit back to you.
Quote Template: A custom-built form, worksheet, or cost-breakdown template that can combine information from the buyer and suppliers, and can perform calculations.

You must add at least one of these response items to a Sourcing Event, but you can add as many as you want, including multiple response items of the same type.

We will go through more details for each type of Response Item in the sections below.

Required vs. Optional Response Items

After adding a Response Item to the Sourcing Event, you can select whether a supplier response is required or optional in order for them to submit their overall response to the Sourcing Event. If you want a response item to be optional, just toggle off the ‘Required’ button.

Hidden Response Items

You can also hide and un-hide response items with a simple toggle. This can be useful when you're using the sourcing event for multiple rounds of bids. This is often useful with the "Clone" feature; after gathering "round 1" bids, you can clone a Quote Sheet (for example), make some modifications, and use it for "round 2" bids with suppliers, and hide the "round 1" Quote Sheet. When a Response Item is hidden, it is only hidden from suppliers, but still visible to any internal user who has access to the Sourcing Event.

Form

You can create custom forms, surveys, or questionnaires with the Form Builder. It is often used to send surveys to suppliers (such as ESG surveys, Tariff surveys, Risk surveys, RFIs). You can build questionnaires with various question types - from text responses to yes/no questions, choice questions, rating scales, and more.

Quote Sheet

Quote Sheets are used for requesting quotes from your suppliers on a list of items.

A new quote sheet has some default columns turned on that will look like this:

By clicking Edit at the top right corner, you will be able to edit the columns for the Quote sheet:

Quote Sheet Title: enter title for the quote sheet, which will be visible both internally and to the invited vendors.
Vendor Instructions: Instructions for the vendors on how to submit their responses or other special instructions.
Columns to Show: Columns with information you want to show in the quote sheet. There are two categories here - Item details and Quantities.
- Select the things you want to provide information for, such as Part Number and Quantity.
- Deselect the columns that are not applicable to your sourcing event (e.g., Needed by Date or Item Description) - these columns will then be hidden.
Vendor Response Data: Select what data you want to collect from the vendors for each item, such as Price, Line Item Total, Lead Time, MOQ, and more. To create shipping or payment terms, first mark the checkbox and then enter the options the supplier will be able to select from.
- You can also choose the Base Currency for the Price. By toggling on the option to allow supplier to select the currency, you will see a list of options for currencies that you want to allow the supplier to bid in. When suppliers quote in a currency different from the Base Currency, their quoted prices are converted to the Base Currency at the market exchange rate at the time of quote. Their original quoted prices in non-Base Currency and the exchange rate will be saved with their quote.

After you have changed the settings on the Quote Sheet Builder, make sure to click Update in the top right corner. Then you can adjust vendor response requirements for each line-item using the checkboxes in the grid below.

In the example below, all of the possible columns have been selected in the settings. At the bottom of the page, you have options to add more line items (either one-by-one or 20 at a time).

You can then add any information on the line-items, such as item details, quantities, and change what information you would like suppliers to provide for each item. Note that in the last column Allow No-Bid, you can choose whether to allow suppliers to opt out of bidding for that specific line-item.

You can also add existing items (saved to your company account) to the quote sheet by clicking Add Saved Items. By adding a saved item, the quote sheet will get automatically pre-populated with the available information for that item. When adding saved items, you can edit item description in the quote sheet, but you can’t edit item name or part number - however, if you update it in the Items section, the update will transfer to the quote sheet as well.

On the left side of the quote sheet, you can re-arrange the order of line-items, and by clicking on the three dots on the left side of the line-item, you can:

Duplicate Line
Add Variant - this can be used to add different variants of a line-item (e.g., color, size, material)
Save to Sourcing Database - this will add the item (or multiple items if it has different variants) to the Items database
Delete Line

If you plan on repeatedly using the same format of the quote sheet setup, your company Admins can create templates in the Company Settings area, under Sourcing Settings —> Quote Sheet Settings.

Document Upload

Document Upload response item is used when you want to collect one or more documents from your suppliers (for example, their Product Catalog).

Simply add a title of the document to be uploaded by vendors, add instructions, and choose whether suppliers can upload a single or multiple files.

Document Template

Document Template can be used if you want suppliers to fill out a template or a file, provided by you. It can be useful if you want to compare supplier bids on a 1-1 basis.

Here, you simply need to add a title of the document to be uploaded by the vendors, instructions, whether they are allowed to upload a single or multiple files, and provide a template or a reference file.

Quote Template

Finally, if that is part of your Supplios package, you will be able to add a custom quote template. This is custom-made and depends on your company's needs. Once you have one or multiple templates created, they will be available from the drop-down menu when you click to add a Quote Template.