RFQs and supplier quotes
Before you start, open these. They are both under Purchases in the menu: Requests for quotes and Supplier quotes.
Can’t find one? It may be turned off for your business, or your account may not be allowed to open it. Ask the person who set up your FeePrime. They can fix both.
Before you commit to buying, you ask. These two pages turn that asking into a record, instead of a phone call nobody can reconstruct afterwards.
The request
A request for quotes holds an RFQ number, a request date and a subject.
It names the supplier you sent it to, the currency you want to be quoted in, and the delivery location it should be priced to.
It has two dates, and they ask different questions.
- Expected response date. When you need their answer.
- Expected delivery date. When you would need the goods.
Lines are what you are asking about. Notes carry any conditions.
Say where it is being delivered
This field is easy to skip, and expensive to skip.
A price to your main warehouse and a price to a branch three hundred kilometres away are two different prices. A supplier who was not told will quote you for the easy one.
Put the location in the request, and the quote you compare is the quote you can actually accept.
The answer
A supplier quote records what came back. Their quote number, which request it answers, the supplier, the quote date, and, importantly, valid until.
It also holds their currency, delivery location, expected delivery date, payment terms, lines, notes and a status.
Supplier quotes run out, exactly like the ones you send out. A price from six weeks ago is not a price any more. Recording how long it is valid for is what tells you whether you are still comparing real offers.
Compare like with like
Three quotes can only be compared if they answer the same question.
So before you compare them, check they agree on four things. The delivery location. The currency. The quantity. The payment terms.
A cheaper price per item, with worse payment terms, delivered somewhere else, can easily cost you more.
You cannot work that out afterwards if nobody filled the fields in. That is the real reason to record quotes instead of leaving them in your inbox.
Payment terms are part of the price
Thirty days to pay is worth money, especially when cash is tight.
A supplier who is two percent more expensive but gives you a month is often the better deal. You can only see that if somebody wrote the terms down next to the number.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, send an RFQ to two suppliers. Record two quotes against it with different terms and different validity dates. Then try to decide which one is better. Doing it makes the point faster than reading about it.