RFQ - Buyer Workflow - Adding Suppliers in Bulk with Import Feature

What Are We Trying to Accomplish?

Buyers can now onboard themselves quickly by taking advantage of our Bulk Import feature for Supplier Companies & Supplier Contacts. In order to send out a new request, the Suppliers must be already added to SourceDay.

How Do I Add Suppliers in Bulk? 

1. Add Supplier Categories
2. Bulk Import Supplier Companies (only for adding new companies and their 1 primary contact)
3. Bulk Import Supplier Contacts (for adding new contacts to an existing company)

Step 1 - Add Supplier Categories

Adding Supplier categories is an optional but recommended step in RFQ. The number of Suppliers can soon become unwieldy, so we recommend that buyers set up a list of categories that their suppliers fall into so that they may easily identify the right suppliers to send an RFQ to.

In order to user the bulk company upload feature and associate a company with a category, the category must already be saved, or the user will see an error.

Supplier companies can belong to 0, 1, or multiple categories, so we've seen use cases for something as specific as "currency in Yen".

Support Article for Adding Categories

Step 2 - Add Supplier Companies via Bulk Import

Navigate to the Suppliers tab and click on the "Import" button on the top right of the suppliers table:

https://app.sourceday.com/rfq/supplier_companies/import

From here, buyers can download one of our import templates and append their own data in a consistent format. The templates can be downloaded as a CSV or Excel (.xls) file:

Note: It's important that users follow the exact format of the templates and do not edit the first row of headers. Name, Contact Name, and Contact Email are required fields, while Categories & Supplier ERP ID are optional and can be blank.

After the buyer saves their companies as a .CSV or .XLS file, the user can import back into RFQ by clicking on the Choose File button and then clicking Upload:

SourceDay will tell the user if there are any problems with the uploaded file. Here are the common issues:

• "Header Row Not Found"
  • The user has edited the first row of headers in the file. Please try again with a first row that matches exactly with the template examples
• "Categories '____' not found"
  • The user has added a category that was not previously added to RFQ. There are two options to resolve this issue:
    • re-upload without the missing categories OR add the categories first, then re-upload
  • Note: Categories in the file must be an EXACT match with the supplier categories stored in RFQ
• "Categories is empty"
  • This company has a blank Categories section. The file will still upload
• "Email Invalid"
  • A user can only have 1 email
  • Ensure the email is in ____@___.__ format
• "Name has already been taken"
  • 2 companies cannot have the same name
  • The user might be attempting to upload more users for the same company. In that case they'd want to take advantage of the Supplier Contact bulk import feature

Notes:

• Errors will cause the file upload to fail. Warnings will still allow the upload to work
• Formatting will cause problems in the file. We recommend that users use CSV because it is easier to identify issues and does not include Excel formatting such as line breaks, which will cause issues.

Step 3 - Add Supplier Contacts via Bulk Import

Navigate to the Suppliers tab, click "Contacts" on the lefthand panel, and click on the "Import" button on the top right of the suppliers table:

https://app.sourceday.com/rfq/supplier_contacts/import

From here, buyers can download one of our import templates and append their own data in a consistent format. The templates can be downloaded as a CSV or Excel (.xls) file:

Note: It's important that users follow the exact format of the templates and do not edit the first row of headers. All fields are required

After the buyer saves their companies as a .CSV or .XLS file, the user can import back into RFQ by clicking on the Choose File button and then clicking Upload:

SourceDay will tell the user if there are any problems with the uploaded file. Here are the common issues:

• "Header Row Not Found"
  • The user has edited the first row of headers in the file. Please try again with a first row that matches exactly with the template examples
• "Email Invalid"
  • • A user can only have 1 email
    • Ensure the email is in ____@___.__ format
• "Name has already been taken"
  • 2 companies cannot have the same name
  • The user might be attempting to upload more users for the same company. In that case they'd want to take advantage of the Supplier Contact bulk import feature

Notes:

• Errors will cause the file upload to fail. Warnings will still allow the upload to work
• Formatting will cause problems in the file. We recommend that users use CSV because it is easier to identify issues and does not include Excel formatting such as line breaks, which will cause issues.