A product inquiry lets you ask a vendor for product pricing and delivery information. A single inquiry can contain several vendor sections, each with its own products, recipients, messages and responses. Sending an inquiry or receiving a vendor's response does not yet record the products in a warehouse.
Prerequisites
Follow these steps in a browser. Warehouse and purchase order features must be enabled in your service. You need permission to create product inquiries to make a new inquiry, read permission to view it and edit permission to work with saved sections. Sending also checks your permission to send; in the manager role, permission to create or edit inquiries also grants permission to send them. Transferring to a purchase order and saving it separately require permission to create or edit purchase orders, depending on whether the purchase already has a purchase order.
The vendor must have the products you want to inquire about and a recipient contact with an email address. Products selected for new rows must be enabled. You cannot add the same product to the same vendor section twice. Fill in any missing basic information using the instructions for adding a vendor and its products.
Create an inquiry and fill in the vendor sections
- Open Manage warehouses → Product inquiries and purchase orders. Select Create new order at the top of the page, select Product inquiry in the window that opens and confirm with the Select button.
- The Product inquiry tab already contains the first vendor section. Select the Vendor and Contact at the top of the section. The primary contact or the vendor's only contact may be selected as the recipient. Always check the name and email address.
- Select a Product on the section's product row and enter the No. of products. The product selection is limited to the selected vendor. Add more rows with the Add new product button below the product rows. This adds an inquiry row for an existing product.
- Check the row's Unit price and Price. You can also select a Planned warehouse and then a Planned warehouse slot. These describe a plan and do not record receipt into a warehouse.
- Select Select email template at the top of the section. Check the email subject, content and language in the preview, and select a suitable template for the inquiry.
Add another vendor using the New vendor section button at the top of the tab. Select the vendor in the window that opens and confirm with the button of the same name. Check each section's recipient, products, quantities and email template separately.
The email template must be intended for product inquiries and must either belong to that vendor or be Global. Selecting a contact for a new section may automatically select a template based on the contact's language: the system first looks for the vendor's own template in that language, then for another template in the same language. Check the selection anyway. Creating templates and their content are covered in the instructions for purchasing email templates.
Internal notes below the product rows are for your own use and are not sent to the vendor. Any clarifications intended for the vendor belong in the email template content. Purchase order notes are available only in the purchase order section.
Where does the inquiry row's price come from?
Selecting a product retrieves the unit price primarily from the purchase price in the link between the product and the selected vendor. If that price is missing, the purchase price in the product registry is used. If both are missing, the price is 0. A saved zero is a price: for example, if the vendor price is 0, the registry price is not used in its place.
You can change the unit price manually. The change is saved to the inquiry row and does not update the purchase price in the product registry or the vendor link. The information icon next to the price indicates whether the source is the vendor price, registry price or a manual price. A saved row price is not retrieved again simply because you open the inquiry later.
Price is quantity × unit price. For example, 3 products at 12.50 gives 37.50. After a change to the quantity or unit price, the calculated value is displayed to two decimal places. The calculation does not add VAT, apply the vendor's discount percentage or convert currencies. This inquiry row calculation is separate from the price the vendor provides later.
If loading the price fails, use the circular arrows icon that appears next to the unit price, with the tooltip Retry loading price, or enter the price yourself. Saving and sending are blocked if the price is empty, invalid, negative or still loading. Zero is accepted.
Save and send
Save at the bottom of the form saves changes to the sections' fields and leaves the purchase open. Save and close saves the same changes and closes the form. If saving fails, correct any missing or invalid information indicated. Saving does not send a message.
Save a new inquiry first. Then select Send product inquiry at the bottom of the saved vendor section. Check the vendor and the recipient's name and email address in the confirmation before accepting. Sending saves that section's current information and queues an email to the selected contact. Send each vendor section separately; unfinished changes in other sections are saved using the form's save button.
When sending succeeds, the section changes to Sent, the counter on the send button increases and an inquiry that was a draft changes to Active. The status and success notification indicate that sending has started, not that the email has arrived in the recipient's inbox. Close without saving discards only unfinished form changes; it does not undo a send operation already performed.
The response link and changing the inquiry
The response link for an inquiry sent from the browser is valid for seven calendar days from the start of the sending date in the service's time zone. If you send the inquiry on 5 October, the response page is normally available until the end of 11 October and closes at the start of 12 October. Its validity is therefore not exactly 168 hours from the time of sending. The expiry time shown in the send button's tooltip may differ from the response page's actual cutoff.
A final response closes the link before the deadline. If the link expires before the vendor responds, you can resend a section that is still editable. Resending updates the starting time for the validity period and increases the send counter.
If you change a section that has already been sent or is waiting for processing, it may return to Draft the next time you save, and the old response link is disabled. Mark as draft at the bottom of the section makes the same status change immediately after confirmation. Send the updated information again separately. Previously saved responses remain available to view.
Process the response and transfer to a purchase order
The vendor's final response changes the section to Waiting for processing. Reopen the saved inquiry and select Show vendor responses at the bottom of the section. Check the products, quantities, unit prices, currency, VAT, delivery time, additional information and attachments. If there are several responses, you can browse them using the arrows in the response window. The vendor's own steps are covered in the instructions for responding to a product inquiry.
When you decide to place an order, select Send to orders as a draft at the bottom of the inquiry section and accept the confirmation. This opens the Purchase order tab for the same purchase and creates a new vendor section there as a draft.
The transfer copies the inquiry section's current product rows, quantities, row prices for the same vendor, planned warehouses and warehouse slots, and internal notes. Prices and quantities from the vendor's response are not automatically transferred to the order rows. Compare the order draft with the response and adjust the rows to match the agreed terms. Only products still linked to that vendor are eligible, so also check the number of rows.
The transfer attempts to restore the same contact. Check the restored recipient and the email template selected for the order: the inquiry's email template is not copied as the order template. If necessary, fill in Purchase order notes in the purchase order section. Save the form to save the order draft and the original section's Sent to orders status. The original section is locked. Transferring and saving do not send the purchase order to the vendor; it must be sent separately from the purchase order section.
If you do not proceed with the purchase, you can select Mark as cancelled at the bottom of the inquiry section. Once confirmed, the action immediately saves the Cancelled status, closes the response link and locks the section. It does not delete the section or previous responses, or send the vendor a cancellation message.
Verify the result
Reopen the purchase after saving. Check the inquiry sections' statuses and send counters. After a transfer, check both the locked original section on the Product inquiry tab and the saved draft and its rows on the Purchase order tab.
The entire inquiry changes to Completed when it no longer contains sections that are drafts, sent or waiting for processing. For example, all sections may have been transferred to purchase orders or cancelled. A completed inquiry therefore does not prove that the products have been delivered or received.
The product stock balance increases only when the purchase order is separately received into a warehouse. Viewing a purchase order linked to a task on Android and iOS is a separate function, covered in the instructions for linking a purchase order to a task and messages.