RFQ Autopilot & Reminders

What Autopilot Does

Once an RFQ is live and out to suppliers, Buyer24's autopilot keeps it moving without you babysitting every thread. It runs regularly in the background and handles three things:

• Answers routine supplier questions. When a supplier replies with a clarifying question that your RFQ details and organization guidelines already answer (specifications, quantities, deadlines, delivery terms), the autopilot drafts and sends the answer.
• Nudges silent suppliers. Suppliers who haven't responded get polite reminder emails on a sensible cadence, so quotes keep coming in.
• Escalates what needs a human. Anything ambiguous, commercial, or outside your written guidelines is flagged for you rather than guessed at. The autopilot would rather ask than improvise.

You stay in control: every reminder and answer appears in the RFQ's message thread, so you can always see exactly what was sent and when.

The Default Reminder Cadence

Out of the box, the autopilot follows these rules for silent suppliers:

A few important details:

• The reminder count resets whenever the supplier replies. A supplier who answers once and goes quiet again starts a fresh cycle — they aren't penalized for their earlier silence.
• Reminders are never sent more than once per day to the same supplier, no matter what.
• If a previous email to the supplier bounced or failed to deliver, the autopilot holds off instead of piling more emails onto a broken address.
• Reminders go by email, as one email to every contact kept on the supplier's thread. The autopilot doesn't send WhatsApp messages; to nudge a supplier there yourself, see Connecting WhatsApp.
• A supplier's WhatsApp reply counts as a reply, so it resets the cadence too.
• If the RFQ has no quote deadline, reminders leave out the deadline sentence.

What "No Response" Means

When a supplier is marked no response after the final unanswered reminder:

• Their thread shows a gray no response badge in the RFQ's supplier list.
• The autopilot stops sending them reminders.
• They are treated as out of the running — so once all other suppliers have quoted or declined, Buyer24 can still recommend a winner without waiting on them forever.
• The door stays open. If the supplier replies late, the conversation reactivates normally and the autopilot picks them back up.

Customizing the Cadence

You don't configure the autopilot with sliders and dropdowns — you write down your policy in plain English, and the autopilot follows it.

Add a `## Supplier reminders` section to your organization's procurement guidelines (they live in the Knowledge Base). Whatever you write there overrides the defaults.

Example — patient, long-cycle procurement:

## Supplier reminders

Patient — long-cycle B2B procurement:
- 14 days between reminders for all threads
- Never give up — keep nudging every 14 days indefinitely

Example — aggressive, time-sensitive bidding:

## Supplier reminders

Aggressive — these are time-sensitive bids:
- 3 days between reminders, no matter the deadline
- Cap at 5 reminders before giving up
- After the cap, mark no-response and leave a note for the buyer to call

Tip: Write the rules the way you'd explain them to a new team member. The autopilot reads them as instructions — spacing, caps, exceptions, and what to do when it gives up are all fair game.

If your guidelines don't include a ## Supplier reminders section, the defaults above apply.

Your automation setting still decides

The cadence above is about when a reminder is due. Whether it goes out on its own is decided by your organization's automation level, and since September that applies to everything an agent puts in front of a supplier — not just the first RFQ.

Under Supervised, chasing a quiet supplier and answering a supplier's question on an active thread both stop for your approval, exactly like an outgoing RFQ does. Approve it and it goes; ignore it and nothing reaches the supplier.

A card drafted for a quote deadline that has since passed can't be approved as it is: approving shows that the deadline has passed and removes the card, so draft a new message instead. If you edit the card first, your edited message goes out.

The check happens on the server, so it holds whichever surface the message came from — the app, an automated run, or your AI client.

FAQ

Will the autopilot answer pricing or negotiation questions?

No. It only answers routine clarifications that are already covered by your RFQ content and guidelines. Commercial questions are escalated to you.

Can I see what reminders were sent?

Yes — every reminder is a normal outbound message in the supplier's thread on the RFQ, with full history.

Does it remind suppliers who already quoted or declined?

No. Only suppliers with no pending reply are eligible; threads that are resolved (quote received, declined, selected, or no-response) are left alone.

How does this relate to the assistant?

The autopilot handles live RFQ follow-up automatically. For everything else — drafting, sourcing, analysis — you work through Your AI Assistant. A summary of what the autopilot did lands in your Digest Email.