A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document that solicits proposals from various suppliers for items your company wants to buy. An RFP is sent to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. It is introduced early in the procurement cycle, either at the preliminary study (exploratory) or at the procurement stage.
In Precoro, an RFP can be created manually from scratch or from a Purchase Requisition (PR). Creating an RFP from a PR eliminates manual work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- How To Create Requests for Proposals
- Requests for Proposals Statuses
- How to Track Requests for Proposals
How To Create Requests for Proposals
1. Navigate to the left side of the menu, open the Request for Proposals tab → press the Create button.
2. Select Location, Currency, Due Date, Desired Delivery Date, and Documents Custom Fields (if available and required) for your RFP. Once done, press the Create button.
Please note that you can also create and add the Custom Numbering for the RFP documents. Find more information on this feature here.
3. Add the Suppliers and Items as needed on the RFP creation page.
- Add Supplier — this button helps to include a supplier that already exists in your database.
- Enter Supplier — add a completely new supplier to the database and then to your RFP.
- Add Items — add items from your existing catalog.
- Add Empty Row — describe the item manually. It is mainly used for new items outside of your current catalog.
- Import Items — upload items from the file in bulk in two quick steps.
4. Once all items and suppliers have been added to the RFP, press the Confirm button. It will send your request for proposals to suppliers.
5. The Suppliers will get an email with the RFP link so that they can submit their proposals.
6. You will get an email notification once the suppliers have submitted their proposals. To keep track of the Suppliers’ quotes, click on the list symbol in the Status column and select the items you wish to Approve by checking them.
You can select more than one Supplier in the Request for Proposal or even approve a supplier for each item in the order. It will help you choose only the best deals and save money.
7. If you have approved all available items, the Request for Proposal status will automatically change to Completed, and the Suppliers will be notified by email that the proposal submission process has been completed.
Also, if you have approved only part of the Supplier’s proposal, you can complete the Request for Proposals yourself by clicking the Complete button. The Request for Proposals status will be changed to Completed.
8. The Requests for Proposal document is available for download in XLSX and PDF formats. In the Download options, choose the desired format. In addition, you can select a needed language from the drop-down list.
Requests for Proposals Statuses
Document Statuses:- Draft — the RFP has been created but not submitted yet. You need to add items and suppliers to it first.
- Approved — you have confirmed the RFP, and requests have been sent to the suppliers.
- Completed — the suppliers for all the items have been selected. The process of collecting proposals has been completed.
- Draft — the request has not been sent to the supplier. It will be sent as soon as you submit the RFP.
- Sent — the request has been sent but has not been considered by the supplier yet.
- Confirmed — the supplier has submitted a proposal. Now, you can consider it.
- Need to create a supplier — the supplier, who was entered by the Enter Supplier button and is not yet added to your suppliers' list, submitted one’s proposal. To work with this proposal further, you should first add this supplier to your Suppliers list in Precoro.
- Rejected — the supplier rejected your request. This means that this supplier will not be able to deliver items from this RFP.
How to Track Requests for Proposals
After Requests For Proposals are submitted, your suppliers get notified by email while you are awaiting their quotes to be submitted. You will receive an email notification once your suppliers have submitted their quotes.
To see the status of a Request For Proposal:
- Go to the Requests for Proposals page.
- Open the request.
- Check the product statuses:
- Pending — a supplier for this product has not yet been selected.
- Rejected — the supplier will not be able to deliver this product.
- No proposal — no suppliers will be able to deliver this product.
- Supplier selected — the supplier for this product is selected in another proposal.
- Approved — the supplier for this product has already been selected.
4. If the supplier has submitted an offer, you can see the quote. For more details, just click the
Status icon and open a proposal.
Also, you can check the status of the email you sent to the supplier. Click on the Resend to Supplier button anytime you wish to send the email again.
To expedite and optimize searches you can utilize an advanced set of filters available on every document management page. A more detailed guide on How to Use Filters in Precoro you can find in the corresponding link.
To use filters for Requests for Proposals click Filters and set the parameters you need in the appropriate fields, then click:
- Filter results — to apply the selected filtering parameters.
- Save current filter — to save the selected filtering instantly.
- Reset all filters — to reset the selected filtering parameters.
You can filter results by both Items Custom Fields and Documents Custom Fields in Requests for Proposals but first, you need to activate them as described in the instructions here.