The items in an RFQ change from business to business, with RFQ you can customize your templates based on types of items, jobs, vendors, or even down to which buyer is requesting the quote. The template is the foundation of RFQ. When you are starting a request you choose the template that best matches the items you will be including in the Request.
What Columns Do You Want to Display on the Template?
Think of this as what information you need to provide to the bidders and what information you will need from the bidders. You can include as many as you need but you MUST include the following:
- Part Number
- Quantity
- Cost
- Unit of Measure
You can also add things that are important to you like color, or organically certified, really, anything you feel is important for the quote. Then save your file as an excel file or csv. The example excel file below includes the four required fields plus a few extra that I will need to provide on the quote. Note that the body of the excel file is empty. I've only included a header row. (The information comes later).
Next, Upload Your File
1) From the Items Page - Click the green "New Template" button, choose your excel/csv file and click open
2) Choose a name for your template and enter it in the "Name" input box - be sure to choose a name that you will remember as you will use this template later to create your request
3) Set the values for your columns, starting out it will look like this:
4) Choose the Type of data for each of your fields.
- text - letters, numbers and special characters
- number - numbers only 0-9
- date - numbers and forward slashes in this format mm/dd/yyyy
5) For information that would be nice to have from the suppliers but not absolutely critical click "Response Optional".
6) For information that the supplier must provide you on each bid click the "Response Required" check box.
7) For information that you are provided leave Response Optional and Response Required blank. Headers/Fields without these boxes checked will be not be open for the supplier to provide information. For example, when you map the Part Number, Quantity, & Unit of Measure those field are only open to you to provide, since you will be telling the suppliers what part, amount, and UOM you are requesting for the bid.
8) Then map your primary required fields in the table on the right - In this case I named them the same thing so that they would be easy to map. In the end it should look something like this:
7) Hit the blue save button at the top of the page.
Updating Your Template
Things change, if you need to update your template after you have saved you can quickly and easily make updates. Note: You cannot remove columns or add columns at this step. If you would like to do this, it's easiest to just upload a new template.
1) Click on the "Items" tab and you will see your saved templates in the left navigation
2) Click on your template
3) At the top of the page you will now see update and delete buttons
4) Make the changes, and then click update. If you want to remove the template, just press delete.