Managing Your Supplier Directory
How to build and maintain your supplier directory — adding suppliers and contacts, tracking performance, and keeping the directory clean.
Why the Supplier Directory Matters
Buyer24 maintains two related directories:
- Suppliers — company-level records (the organizations you buy from)
- Contacts — individual people at those suppliers
Together they form your organization's shared procurement contact book. When a buyer adds a supplier to an RFQ, they search this directory — so the more complete it is, the faster buyers can get started without re-entering details every time.
Procurement Managers and Organization Admins can view, add, edit, and remove suppliers. Buyers can search and use the directory when creating RFQs, but cannot edit supplier records.
Adding a Supplier
Click Suppliers in the app bar on the left → Add Supplier, and fill in:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Company Name | The supplier's trading or legal name |
| Industry / Category | What they supply (e.g., Electronics, Raw Materials, Safety Equipment) |
| Website | Optional — useful reference |
| Notes | Internal notes about this supplier (not visible to the supplier) |
Click Save, then add at least one contact (see below).
Suppliers Added Inline (from an RFQ)
When a buyer types a new supplier name and email directly on an RFQ, that supplier is saved to the directory automatically. You'll find them in the Suppliers list afterwards — open their profile and fill in any additional details later.
Finding suppliers you don't have yet
When your directory has nobody for a category, Buyer24 will go and look. It searches for candidates, checks each one fits the category and has a reachable contact address, drops anything already in your directory, and adds what survives for you to review. For each new supplier it saves up to five sales contacts, with phone numbers, messaging handles and language where the supplier publishes them, and all of them are attached to the RFQ draft. Nothing is contacted without going through your normal RFQ flow.
Searches run in the country's own language. A search for distributors in Poland is written in Polish, and Germany gets its own German one, plus a separate search for authorized dealers of the brands you named. English-only searching keeps surfacing the same handful of English-indexed exporters and walks straight past the local stockist who never lists the part online — in one pilot a Polish query found a dealer in Lublin that a dozen English ones had missed.
You can turn this off. Under Suppliers → Preferences, the Private Suppliers Only mode restricts everything to suppliers your organization already owns. It applies everywhere, including research from your AI client.
Service offerings
A supplier profile carries a Service Offerings list — the packaged things buyers can ask that supplier for, added one at a time from the profile. Offerings sharpen matching when Buyer24 works out who to send an RFQ to, and published ones appear on the supplier's own public page and on category pages, so they're worth a minute on the suppliers you use most.
Adding Contacts
Each supplier can have multiple contacts, and each contact belongs to one supplier. Click Add Contact on the supplier's profile:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Full name |
| Required — this is what buyers will message | |
| Phone | Optional |
| Messaging | Optional. Add messaging ID for each handle the contact uses: WhatsApp, WeChat, Skype, Telegram or Other. A WhatsApp number (with the country code) is what lets your team nudge the contact on WhatsApp |
| Job Title | Helps buyers know who they're talking to (e.g., "Sales Manager") |
| Language | Preferred language for communications. Messages to this contact are translated into it |
| Primary | Mark one contact as the main one for this supplier |
The same contact editor appears on the supplier's page and on the Contacts page, and contact cards show the phone and messaging handles.
Primary Contact and RFQ Threads
The primary contact is listed first on the supplier's profile. An RFQ doesn't go to the primary contact alone, though: the supplier's thread emails every contact attached to it, and you choose who stays on each thread under Thread with:. See Who a Thread Emails.
Tip: For large suppliers, add multiple contacts — regional contacts or different contacts per product category.
The Supplier Profile
Click any supplier in the list to open their profile. It includes:
- Details — company name, website, industry/category, internal notes, documents and certificates
- Contacts — all contacts with their email, phone, language preference, and primary indicator
- Activity — RFQs this supplier has been involved with, response history, and quote history
- Performance metrics — see below
Supplier Performance
Each supplier's profile page includes a performance summary based on historical data:
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Response Rate | How often they reply to RFQs you contact them on |
| Avg. Quote Turnaround | Typical time from first contact to quote received |
| Quote Win Rate | How often their quote is the one selected |
| Total RFQs | How many procurement requests they've been involved in |
| Last Active | Date of their most recent response |
Use this data when deciding who to contact for a new RFQ. A supplier with a 20% response rate and an 8-day average turnaround isn't a reliable choice for urgent purchases.
Supplier Notes and Documents
On any supplier profile you can attach internal information your team should know:
Notes — Private, internal text. Suppliers never see these. Great for negotiation context, red flags, or relationship history:
- Preferred contact methods ("always email, never call")
- Historical context ("had quality issues in 2023, resolved")
- Negotiation notes ("willing to offer 5% discount for orders over $10K")
- Warnings ("Avoid for orders over $50K — capacity issues")
Documents — Upload supplier qualification certificates, ISO certificates, NDAs, contracts, insurance certificates, or product data sheets. Accessible to your whole team, never shared with the supplier automatically.
Searching the Directory
On the Suppliers page — search by company name, filter by category, or filter by active/inactive status.
When adding a supplier to an RFQ — type part of a company name, contact name, or email; results appear as you type. Select a result to add that supplier to the RFQ thread.
The Contacts page — shows all individual contacts across all suppliers, useful when you remember a person's name but not their company. Search by name or email, or filter by supplier.
Editing and Removing Suppliers
To edit a supplier's details, open them from the Suppliers list, click Edit, update the fields, and click Save.
To remove a supplier, open their profile, click Options → Delete Supplier, and confirm. What happens:
- The supplier disappears from the directory and won't appear in future RFQ searches
- Historical data — past RFQ threads, messages, quotes — is preserved
- Any ongoing RFQ threads involving this supplier remain accessible
To re-add a removed supplier, create a new supplier record.
Keeping the Directory Clean
A cluttered supplier directory slows buyers down. Keep it healthy:
- Remove suppliers you no longer work with so buyers don't contact the wrong people. Historical RFQ data is preserved either way.
- Update contact details when they change — bounced messages often mean an outdated email address. Fix it in the directory so future RFQs go to the right person. Bounce notices themselves are recognised automatically and never saved as contacts.
- Add notes after notable interactions — "Offered 5% discount for orders over $10K" or "Slow to respond, always follow up after 3 days" is valuable institutional knowledge.
- Mark preferred suppliers — use the category or notes field to flag preferred suppliers for common categories.
- Add certifications and documents — store them on the supplier profile so your whole team can access them.