AppFinity's Vendor Portal System provides the vendors and the company, a common view of the purchasing data. This visibility allows vendors to check outstanding purchase orders and make changes on them as necessary. With a shared view of the data, vendor updates and inquiries that are normally conducted through time-consuming phone calls could be lessened and instead performed with only few mouse clicks. For example, a significant call volume to Purchasing Department is from a salesperson in the vendor company to acknowledge the receipt of the order and to schedule delivery dates and payments. With the Vendor Portal, the vendor can simply perform these updates online.

On the company's side, the Vendor Portal provides an effective resource to communicate the changes in the purchase order document such as contact details, delivery addresses, quantities, additional orders, or other relevant information. Traditionally, these changes are carried out by re-printing and re-sending the printed purchase order, confirming via Email, or calls to vendor. Moving these processes online reduces the administrative costs of these transactions and ensures accuracy in the shared information.

The system is designed to allow a change to only the specific information the company wants the vendors to change. For example, a setting is provided whether or not to allow vendors to update the item's unit price based on their current price list. In some cases, prices change regularly depending on the nature of the item ordered; hence, the purchase order amount is based on the updated price. A setting is also available to enable the vendors to update the delivery dates for each line item. This helps the company to forecast their inventory status.

To ensure that the company is always alerted with the changes in the purchase order by a vendor, the system sends an email notification to the company administrator for any change on the PO by the vendor. It is seamlessly integrated with SAP Business One; all the changes are automatically updated to the purchase order document when viewed from the SAP Business One application.

Vendor Portal Key Features

View All Purchase Orders

The system only shows the purchase orders for the logged-in vendor. It displays the purchase order number, date of the order and the total amount. If the vendor has been defined to update the item's unit price, an 'Update' link under the 'Item Unit Price' column will be shown.

Update Purchase Orders

Click the 'Update' link to display the details of the purchase order. The window shows the item numbers and descriptions, the quantities ordered, the current prices and expected delivery dates. The columns 'New Unit Price' and 'Vendor Deliver Date' are available for editing. Once updated, the vendor can also enter some remarks in the space provided. Click on the 'OK' button to save the changes made.

Print/Preview Purchase Order

To print/preview the purchase order, click on the link under the 'PO #' column.