07 — Ask Vendors for Rates (RFQs)

Some numbers on your costing you know yourself — the template's fixed charges, your mill price. The rest you want vendors to compete on: ocean freight, CHA, surveyors, even the rice itself. This section puts those cost lines out to tender as Requests for Quotation (RFQs), one per cost category, so the freight forwarders never see what the mills quoted and the mills never see your freight numbers.

Vendors do not need an account or a password. Each supplier gets a personal quote link by email and fills in rates on a simple web page — their quotes land back in your system automatically.

Before you start

• Finish Create an Export Costing — you need a saved costing with its charge lines in place.
• Your suppliers must exist with an email address on file — set up in Products, Packaging, Ports & Cost Heads.

One-time technical setup — ask your administrator. Sending RFQs by email needs an outgoing email account configured on the system (under Email Account in the settings). Ask your administrator to set this up once, before your first RFQ goes out. Without it, you can still create RFQs and hand the quote links to vendors yourself (step 6), but the automatic emails will not send.

How the pieces fit

flowchart LR
    costing["Export Costing\ncharge lines"] --> rfq1["RFQ — Ocean Freight\nto shipping lines"]
    costing --> rfq2["RFQ — CHA\nto clearing agents"]
    costing --> rfq3["RFQ — Procurement Cost\nto rice mills"]
    rfq1 --> link1["personal quote link\nper supplier"]
    rfq2 --> link2["personal quote link\nper supplier"]
    rfq3 --> link3["personal quote link\nper supplier"]
    link1 & link2 & link3 --> sq["Supplier Quotations\narrive on their own"]

One costing fans out into several RFQs — one per cost category — and every supplier on an RFQ gets their own private link. Whatever they quote flows back as a Supplier Quotation without you typing anything.

Steps

1. Open the Create menu on your costing

1. Open your Export Costing.
2. Click Create at the top right, then Requests for Quotation.

The Create menu's entries change as the deal moves through its statuses — Requests for Quotation is there from the start, on a Draft costing, before Quotation appears (that entry only shows up once you have picked a combination, in Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix).

2. Pick the cost categories to tender

A dialog asks "Which cost categories do you want quotes for?" and lists every charge line a vendor could quote.

1. Tick the categories you want vendor rates for — for example CHA and Ocean Freight.
2. Click Create RFQs.

Charges that compute from other numbers (percent-of-subtotal or manual lines, like insurance) are not in the list — there is nothing for a vendor to quote on those.

How you know it worked: a green message confirms "N RFQs drafted — add each category's suppliers and submit". If you picked one category, its RFQ opens straight away; if you picked several, you land on the RFQ list showing one draft per category.

3. Review the draft RFQ

If you land on the RFQ list, click a draft row to open it. Each RFQ arrives pre-filled from the costing — you rarely change anything here:

• The top of the form carries the deal context: Export Costing, Port of Loading, Port of Discharge and Container Type — the vendor sees this route on their quote page.

• The Items table holds one line for the category, with its Cost Head, the Qty Basis from the charge line, and the quantity taken from your costing (an Ocean Freight RFQ on a 10-container deal shows quantity 10, per container).
• A goods category, such as the rice itself, lists the actual product and tonnage, so the mill quotes on exactly what you will later order.

4. Add the category's suppliers

1. In the Suppliers table, click Add row and pick each Supplier you want quotes from — shipping lines on the freight RFQ, mills on the rice RFQ.
2. Check the Email ID column — it fills from the supplier's contact; type one in if it is empty.
3. Leave Send Email ticked for everyone who should get the email automatically.
4. Click Save — adding suppliers leaves unsaved changes, and the top-right button reads Save until you do. Submit only appears once the form is saved.

How you know it worked: each supplier sits on its own row with Send Email ticked and an email address in place, and the top-right button now reads Submit.

5. Submit — the quote requests go out

1. Click Submit (top right) and confirm.

Every supplier with Send Email ticked receives a branded email — your company logo, the route, the items — with a Submit Your Rate button that opens their personal quote page. No login, no password.

How you know it worked:

• The RFQ's status pill changes to Submitted.
• A new Guest Quote menu appears in the toolbar.

• Open Guest Quote → Guest Quote Links — the dialog lists one personal link per supplier. As quotes come back, a Supplier Quotation counter appears at the top of the form and counts up.

Repeat steps 3–5 for each drafted RFQ.

6. Share or re-send links whenever you need

The Guest Quote menu on a submitted RFQ gives you two tools:

• Guest Quote Links — opens a table with each supplier's personal link and a Copy button. Use it when a vendor prefers WhatsApp to email, or says the email never arrived.

• Send Guest RFQ — re-sends the branded email to every supplier with Send Email ticked. A green message confirms how many emails went out.

One thing to keep in mind: anyone holding a link can submit one quotation, for that supplier, on that RFQ only — they can never see other categories or other vendors' numbers.

Cancelling a link you have sent. The dialog's own note tells you how: "clear the token on the supplier row to revoke a link" — that's the Guest Quote Token field on the RFQ's Suppliers table. It is hidden from the standard grid, so ask your administrator to clear it for that supplier and save. The old link dies immediately, and the next Send Guest RFQ mints a fresh one.

What happens next

Your vendors now each hold a personal quote page. What they see and how their rates come back is the next section: How Vendors Quote (no login needed). Once quotes are in, you pull them into the costing and pick the cheapest mix in Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix.