Source with an RFQ

Personas: Buyer (runs the sourcing; My Request For Quotations or the Purchases group) · Modules: RFQs You need to buy something and want the best deal: write down what you want (products and quantities — no prices), send the request to several suppliers, type in each answer as it arrives, compare them side by side, and turn the winner into a purchase order.

Before you start: the suppliers and products must exist; for My Request For Quotations, an Employee record whose Username equals your login. The Request for Quotation number series (RFQ) ships with the suite.

1. Write the request — Buyer

1. Open Request For Quotations (Purchases group) or My Request For Quotations (Personal shell — your requests only, owner set automatically). Click New Request For Quotation.
2. Fill in the Date, a respond-by Due date for the suppliers, optionally the Store the goods would be delivered to, and a Note. Save — the request is numbered RFQ… at once and sits in DRAFT.
3. Add the wanted items: the Product (or a free-text name), the Quantity (the unit narrows to the product's), and optionally a Target Price — what you hope to pay per unit, your private negotiation anchor. There are no supplier prices anywhere on the request.

2. Send it out — Buyer

1. Send the request to your chosen suppliers (e-mail, print — outside the system), then click Mark Sent (available only in DRAFT). Status: SENT.

3. Capture the answers — Buyer

Each supplier's answer becomes its own Supplier Quote — a separate priced document referencing the request, typed in from the supplier's offer.

1. Open Supplier Quotes (Purchases group), click New Supplier Quote.
2. Pick the Rfq it answers (the dropdown shows the request numbers) and the Supplier; enter the quote's Date, Valid Until, the supplier's own Reference and the Currency. The quote starts in RECEIVED and is labelled RFQ… - Supplier name in every list.
3. Add the items: product, quantity and the supplier's offered price — typed from their document, deliberately never defaulted from your catalog. Line net / VAT / total compute; the totals footer keeps the header sums.
4. Repeat for every supplier that answered — one quote document per supplier.

4. Compare and decide — Buyer

1. Open the Quote Comparison report: every quote with its request, supplier, validity, total and status side by side. Scan the request's block and compare the totals against your target prices.
2. On the winning quote click Select (from RECEIVED) → SELECTED. On the others click Decline → DECLINED. Changed your mind? Decline also works on a SELECTED quote — that is how a selection is undone.
3. On the winner click Generate Purchase Order: the supplier, currency and company plus every line item (product, name, quantity, price, unit, tax) are cloned into a new Purchase Order — its own PO… number, starting DRAFT in its own approval flow — and the quote flips to ORDERED. ORDERED is never set by hand.
4. Note: the request's Store is not carried onto the purchase order — set the delivery store on the order yourself.
5. Close the sourcing: on the request click Close (from SENT) → CLOSED. A sourcing you abandon instead gets Cancel (from DRAFT or SENT) → CANCELLED.

What happened behind the scenes

• Number series Request for Quotation (RFQ); the order drew from the purchase-order series.
• Request path: DRAFT → SENT → CLOSED (or CANCELLED). Quote path: RECEIVED → SELECTED (or DECLINED), then ORDERED via the convert only.
• The Open RFQs dashboard counter drops when the request is closed or cancelled; Quotes By Supplier and Monthly Rfqs track the sourcing volume.

Variations and refusals

• Lifecycle buttons refuse outside their statuses: no Close on a DRAFT (send it first), no Select on a DECLINED quote — declining is final; re-enter the quote if the supplier is back in play.
• Nothing forces a single winner: Select and the convert are per-quote — a split award is simply two selected quotes, each generating its own purchase order.
• The convert works from any quote status the button shows in — use Select first so the decision is on record.

See also

• RFQs — Requests for Quotation — the module reference
• Prepare and send a quotation — the sell-side mirror