Requisitions, RFQs & Quotes

1. THE SOURCING PIPELINE

Three tabs sit alongside Suppliers and Orders in the purchasing navigation:

Suppliers -> Requisitions -> RFQ / Quotes -> Orders

A requisition moves through Draft -> Submitted -> Approved, and from there either converts straight to a draft Purchase Order or feeds into an RFQ. An RFQ moves through Draft -> Sent -> Closed, collecting one Supplier Quote per invited supplier along the way, each of which gets awarded, partially awarded, or not chosen. Requisitions and RFQ are each turned on independently in Settings > Purchase — a business can run Requisitions without RFQ (approve, then order directly), or skip both and keep using Purchase Orders exactly as before.

graph LR
  A["Requisition: Draft"] --> B["Submitted"]
  B --> C{"Approved?"}
  C -->|"Yes"| D["Approved"]
  C -->|"No"| E["Rejected"]
  D --> F["Convert to PO"]
  D --> G["Create RFQ"]
  G --> H["RFQ: Draft to Sent to Closed"]
  H --> I["Quotes compared and awarded"]
  I --> J["Purchase Order"]
  F --> J
  B --> K["Cancelled"]
  D --> K

2. STOCK INTELLIGENCE — BUILDING A REQUISITION FROM REAL DEMAND

Instead of guessing what to reorder, a requisition can be built directly from a live demand analysis:

• History Basis — choose the sales-history window the analysis is based on: Last 30 / 90 / 180 Days, or a custom date range.
• Days Needed — choose how many days of stock you want this requisition to cover: 7, 14, 30, or a custom number of days you type in yourself.
• Run Intelligence — pulls, per item, in one table:
• Current Stock and Available Stock (on-hand net of what's already committed).
• Safety Stock and Reorder Point, calculated from the same lead-time and demand-variability logic used elsewhere in the system.
• Average Daily Need for the chosen history window.
• Days to Stockout — how many days of cover are left at the current average pace.
• Estimated Qty Needed and Estimated Amount — not just "average need per day," but the actual quantity and cost projected for the Days Needed horizon you chose, netted against what's already available.
• Default Supplier, plus every other supplier who has supplied that item before (with their average cost and lead time), expandable per row.
• Add individual items with one click, or Add All Suggested to pull every item that needs restocking into the requisition at once, pre-filled with the calculated quantity.

The one-click "Add Items Below Reorder Point" shortcut is still available underneath Stock Intelligence for a faster, simpler pass when a full demand analysis isn't needed.

3. REQUISITION APPROVAL WORKFLOW

1. Build the requisition (manually, from Stock Intelligence, or both), set a needed-by date and location if applicable, and Save Draft or Save & Submit.
2. A submitted requisition can be Approved or Rejected by anyone with edit rights on the page (or auto-approved, if that setting is turned on).
3. Once approved, a requisition can go two ways:

• Convert to PO — creates a draft Purchase Order directly against a chosen supplier, unpriced (the buyer sets pricing in the normal Purchase Order editor), for when you already know who you're buying from.
• Create RFQ — carries the requisition's items into a new Request for Quote to invite competitive pricing first.

A requisition can be cancelled any time before it's converted.

4. PRINTING A REQUISITION

A requisition can be printed for a physical sign-off trail -- useful for businesses whose approval process still wants a paper (or PDF) record alongside the in-system approval -- using the same Print configurator every other transactional document in the system shares (layout, paper size, color, columns, PDF export; see the Sales Orders guide for the full configurator walkthrough). Print button on the requisition's own page once it's been saved, or a Print icon directly on any row of the Requisitions list.

Because a requisition has no supplier yet (that's exactly what RFQ/ Convert to PO decide) and carries no pricing at all, the printed document is deliberately different from every other printed document in the system: no Rate/Amount columns, no totals, no "Amount in Words" -- just what's being requested, by whom (the requesting location), and by when (its Needed By date). The status stamp reflects the requisition's own six statuses (Draft/Submitted/Approved/ Rejected/Converted/Cancelled) with matching color-coding.

RFQ does not have an equivalent print option -- an RFQ is sent to suppliers as a one-time secure portal link (see section 5), not a document, so there's nothing single-recipient to print.

5. CREATING AND SENDING AN RFQ

1. Confirm the items to quote (carried over from a requisition, or added directly) and a Quotes Due By date.
2. Search and add the suppliers you want to invite.
3. Choose how to send: Email, SMS, or both.
4. Send RFQ to Selected Suppliers — each supplier gets their own secure, one-time link (no login required) to a quote-submission page, valid for a business-configured expiration window (24 hours up to 14 days). Each supplier can submit exactly one quote per RFQ; the link stops working the moment they submit.

6. THE SUPPLIER QUOTE PORTAL

What the supplier sees when they open their link: the requested items and quantities, and for each line, a place to enter their price, the quantity they can actually supply, and their lead time in days. At the bottom of the form they also choose their payment terms (from your configured terms list) and a requested delivery date — both are carried straight through onto the Purchase Order if they're awarded the business. Submitting locks the link; the buyer sees the quote appear immediately on the RFQ.

7. COMPARING QUOTES AND AWARDING

Once quotes start coming in, the RFQ shows every supplier's response status and quote total, with two ways to decide:

• Per-supplier — Approve Quote awards every item that supplier quoted (that isn't already decided) to them in one click and emails/texts them the good news; Reject Quote turns them down and notifies them, leaving their items free to award elsewhere.
• Per-item, side by side — a comparison grid lines up every item against every supplier who quoted it, price and lead time visible for each, so different items can be awarded to different suppliers on the same RFQ (a supplier doesn't have to win everything to win something).

Every award — whichever way it's made — creates a draft Purchase Order automatically for the winning supplier, carrying over their quoted price, quantity, lead time, payment terms, and delivery date.

8. THE QUOTE-SELECTION INTELLIGENCE ENGINE

Above the comparison grid, a Selection Factors panel lets an admin run the numbers instead of eyeballing the comparison manually:

• Price Weight, Lead Time Weight, and Payment Terms Weight — three percentages (default 55 / 25 / 20) that don't need to add up to 100; they're normalized automatically.
• Run Intelligence scores every competing quote on every open item using those weights (lower price, shorter lead time, and longer payment terms all score higher), pre-selects the highest-scoring supplier per item in the comparison grid, and shows a Financial Effect summary: total spend, savings versus the average quote, savings versus the highest quote, how many Purchase Orders will be created, and a spend breakdown per supplier.
• Generate Orders submits whatever's selected — the engine's suggestion, or your own manual overrides on top of it — creating every resulting Purchase Order and notifying every winning supplier in one action.

9. HOW IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE SYSTEM

• Purchase Orders — every path through this pipeline (direct convert, per-supplier award, or Generate Orders) ends in a normal draft Purchase Order, which then follows the same Order -> Receiving -> Bill -> Payment pipeline documented in the Purchase Orders guide.
• Suppliers — quotes are matched to your existing supplier records; a supplier's quote history and awarded orders show up the same way any other purchase does.
• Inventory & Reorder Planning — Stock Intelligence's safety stock, reorder point, and demand calculations use the same underlying logic as reorder planning elsewhere in the system (see Products & Inventory and Production & Demand Planning guides).
• Printing — a requisition uses the same shared Print configurator used across every other transactional document in the system (see section 4).

10. WHY IT SCALES FROM SMB TO ENTERPRISE

11. SETTINGS

Purchase Requisitions ..................... on/off toggle Requisition Approval ...................... manual or auto-approve RFQ / Supplier Quotes ...................... on/off toggle Supplier Quote Link Expiration ............ 24h / 48h / 72h / 7d / 14d Supplier Notification ..................... Email only / SMS only / Email + SMS, with a daily SMS send cap

Quick Reference

  Requisitions list ......................... Purchase > Requisitions
  New requisition ........................... Purchase > Requisitions > New
  Stock Intelligence panel .................. Inside a requisition > Stock
                                               Intelligence
  Print a requisition ........................ Print button on the
                                               requisition's own page, or the
                                               Print icon on any Requisitions
                                               list row
  RFQ / Quotes list ......................... Purchase > RFQ / Quotes
  New RFQ .................................... Purchase > RFQ / Quotes > New,
                                               or Create RFQ from an approved
                                               requisition
  Selection Factors / intelligence engine ... Inside an open RFQ, above the
                                               award comparison grid
  Pipeline settings .......................... Settings > Purchase