08 — How Vendors Quote (no login needed)

Your vendors are rice mills, transporters and shipping-line agents — they will not create accounts or remember passwords. So each supplier on an RFQ gets a personal quote link. They open it on any phone or computer, type their rates, press one button, and the quote lands in your system as a submitted Supplier Quotation — no login, no typing on your side.

This section walks through exactly what the vendor sees, so you can preview a link before sending it and talk a vendor through the page on the phone.

Before you start

• Finish Ask Vendors for Rates (RFQs) first — the quote links are minted per supplier when you submit an RFQ, and the branded email carries each supplier their own link.
• Each vendor only ever sees the charges on their RFQ. Because you raised one RFQ per cost category, the mill quoting your bags never sees your freight numbers, and the shipping line never sees your mill price.

One-time technical setup — ask your administrator
The quote links only work where your site is reachable. For vendors to open them from their own phones and offices, your system must be on a public internet address (not just your office network). Your administrator sets this up once when the system is hosted.

The journey of one quote

flowchart LR
    rfq["You submit the RFQ\n(one per cost category)"] --> email["Each supplier gets an email\nwith a personal quote link"]
    email --> page["Vendor opens /quote/…\nno login"]
    page --> confirm["Vendor reviews\nand submits"]
    confirm --> sq["Supplier Quotation appears\nin your system — already submitted"]
    sq --> pull["You pull rates into the costing\n(next section)"]

Steps

1. Open the quote link

The vendor clicks the button in the RFQ email. You can open the same page yourself: on the submitted RFQ, click Guest Quote > Guest Quote Links and open any supplier's link — what you see is exactly what they see.

How you know it worked: the page opens with your company's letterhead (name, phone, email from Export Settings), says RATE QUOTE REQUESTED FROM with the vendor's name, and shows the container type as a small chip. Below sits one card per charge you asked them to quote, each showing the quantity and the basis (Per Bag, Per Container, …) — so the vendor knows exactly what unit to price in.

If a link was mistyped or you have withdrawn it, the page says "This quote link is invalid or has been withdrawn" instead.

2. Answer "Will you deliver to port?"

At the top of the form sits one toggle that shapes the whole page:

• Toggle on (the default) — the vendor delivers to the loading port, and can quote a different rate per port. The helper text reads "You can quote different rates per port".
• Toggle off — the vendor quotes at their own mill and you arrange pickup. The helper text flips to "Rate at your mill — we arrange pickup" and each charge card collapses to a single Rate box.

How you know it worked: the helper text under the question changes, and the port dropdowns appear or disappear on every card at once.

3. Enter the rates

With delivery on, each charge card offers rows of port + rate:

1. Pick the port in the dropdown — or leave it on Any port if the rate holds regardless of loading port.
2. Type the rate in the box next to it.
3. Click + Add another port to quote a second port at a different rate — as many rows as the vendor likes, with an ✕ to remove extras.

How you know it worked: the dark bar pinned to the bottom counts along — "1 of 1 charges quoted" (or 2 of 5, and so on). Only rates above zero count; a card the vendor leaves blank is simply skipped, so a partial quote is fine.

4. Fill in the quote details

Below the charge cards, one small card holds the commercial terms:

1. CURRENCY — INR, USD or EUR; one currency for the whole quote.
2. VALID TILL — how long the rates hold. Optional, but a past date is rejected.
3. NOTES (OPTIONAL) — anything you should know ("rate holds for full 10-FCL lot"). The note arrives on your side as a comment on the Supplier Quotation.

The footer of the page shows your phone number — "Questions? Call or WhatsApp us at …" — pulled from Export Settings, so a stuck vendor calls you instead of giving up.

5. Review & Submit

1. The vendor clicks Review & Submit in the bottom bar (it stays greyed out until at least one rate is in).
2. A Confirm your quote sheet lists every line — charge, port, currency, rate and basis — plus the valid-till date, with the warning "You won't be able to edit after submitting."
3. Go back returns to the form for corrections; Submit quote sends it.

How you know it worked: after submitting, the vendor sees a green tick — "Thank you — your rates have been received" — with a reference number (the Supplier Quotation number).

6. The link becomes single-use

Each link accepts exactly one quote. If the vendor (or anyone with the link) opens it again, the page shows what was submitted, read-only:

Two things follow from this:

• A vendor needs to revise their rates? Open their Supplier Quotation in your system and cancel it — their link comes back to life and they can quote afresh.
• A link leaked or a vendor dropped out? The link can be withdrawn so the page shows "invalid or withdrawn" — but there is no button for this on the RFQ yet; see below.

Withdrawing a link — ask your administrator
The token behind each link lives in a hidden, read-only field on the RFQ's supplier row, so you cannot clear it from the form yourself. Ask your administrator to clear that supplier's Guest Quote Token — the link dies instantly.

7. Check your side — the quote is already in

Nothing to type, nothing to approve. The moment the vendor submits, a Supplier Quotation appears in your system, already in Submitted state — open Supplier Quotation from the search bar (or Buying > Supplier Quotation) and the newest entry is theirs.

How you know it worked: the Supplier Quotation carries the Export Costing link, the Port of Discharge and Container Type from the RFQ, and one item row per rate the vendor entered — a vendor who quoted two ports produces two rows, each with its own Port of Loading. The vendor could only ever set the rates: every other field is filled from your RFQ, so nothing on the page can be tampered with.

Where the rates go from here

The quotes now sit ready in your system, one per vendor. Next you snapshot them into the costing, let the system build every valid vendor mix per port, and pick the cheapest: Pull Rates & Pick the Cheapest Mix.