🏢 The Suppliers Page
To get detailed insight into your vendor relationships and customise purchasing rules, you will use the Suppliers Page. This dashboard is designed to display the most important logistical and financial information about your suppliers.
It is vital to fill this data in correctly, as Optiply relies on these exact metrics to give you the best, most cost-effective purchasing advice!
⚠️ CRITICAL SETUP NOTE:
Source System Sync: If your source system (webshop/ERP) already has suppliers configured, Optiply will read them directly from there. You do not have to manually add them in Optiply!
First Purchase Advice: To calculate your very first purchase advice, two fields must be filled in for the supplier: Delivery time (Lead Time) and Manual order period (Reorder Period).
📋 1. The Suppliers Overview Dashboard
The main overview acts as your master list of vendors. You can customise this view to show up to seventeen different columns of data using the Column View Selector icon at the top right-hand side of the screen.
Here is what the available columns represent:
Column Name | Description |
Id & Name | The internal Supplier ID number and the Supplier's Name. |
Notes | Manual notes you have saved (these display wherever the supplier is shown). |
Ignored | Shows if the supplier is currently active or ignored by the system. |
Min. Order Value | The minimum financial amount required to place an order. |
Fixed Order Costs | The fixed monetary fee charged to place and deliver an order. |
Lead Time (days) | The agreed-upon time from placing an order to receiving it. |
Average Lead Time | The actual measured time it takes to receive an order based on historical data. |
Lead Time Deviation | The difference between the promised lead time and the actual average lead time. |
Reorder Period | The amount of time you manually set between placing orders. |
Advised Reorder Period | Optiply's algorithm-driven advice on how often you should reorder. |
Supplier Cut-off | The daily time limit by which the supplier will accept a new order. |
Reacting to... | Shows if the options for Backorders or Lost Sales are toggled on or off. |
Agenda Managed Manually | Shows if you have a manual ordering agenda set for this vendor. |
Container Metrics | Max weight and volume data (for users who work with shipping containers). |
Quick Actions:
Edit: Click the "Edit" button on a specific row to quickly set or alter values directly from the overview list.
Add Supplier: Click the "Add supplier" button to open a pop-up and manually create a brand new vendor. (Don't forget to click Save!)
⚙️ 2. Editing Individual Supplier Settings
When you click on a specific supplier's name, you open their detailed settings page. Here, you can adjust the specific rules that govern how Optiply calculates its orders.
A. Supplier Information Tab
Under this folder, you will configure the baseline math:
Planning: Set the Lead time and Reorder period.
Order Information: Set the Fixed order costs and Minimum order value.
Container: Set maximum capacity and container volume.
Note: To activate container features, please contact your CSM or support@optiply.nl.
B. Advanced Options & Toggles
Ignore Supplier: Turn this on to completely stop placing orders with this vendor. Their products will no longer be included in your active stock value, and the supplier will turn grey on your overview list.
Global Location Number (GLN): Set the identifier used for your warehouse location (primarily used when placing orders through EDI).
Backorders: Set whether you allow Optiply to automatically prepare backorders for this vendor.
Avoid Lost Sales: If Optiply sees that a product is about to run out of stock, this toggle allows the system to automatically prepare an extra emergency order. (The emergency order will trigger if the purchase value is higher than your set minimum order value).
Order in Lots: Ensure purchase orders are generated in specific package quantities. (Example: If the algorithm says you need 24 pieces, but the supplier sells them in boxes of 12, the final PO will request "2 boxes" instead of "24 pieces").
Exclude Purchase Prices: Toggle this if you need to export your purchase orders without the purchase prices visible.
E-mail Settings: Add the vendor's email address. To send the order to multiple people/departments, use a semicolon (
;) to separate the addresses.
📅 3. Rescheduling the Agenda
You have the ability to manually reschedule the purchasing agenda. This is used if you want to receive advice earlier or later than the standard planned cycle, or if you need to retrieve deleted draft orders.
How it works: When you reschedule the calendar, the new cycle begins from the exact date you set.
Example: If your reorder period is 7 days, and you reschedule the calendar to a Tuesday, you will receive all future order advice for this supplier every Tuesday.
⚠️ Note on Agendas: Your scheduled agenda may fluctuate dynamically if you have the "Backorders" and "Avoid Lost Sales" features enabled, as the system will generate emergency advice outside of your standard schedule!
📦 4. Supplier Products Tab
To see every single item associated with a specific vendor, select the Supplier Products folder within their settings page. You can use the search filters here to easily narrow down specific products or groups of products tied to this supplier.
📥 5. Bulk Uploading Supplier Data (CSV)
If you have dozens of suppliers to update, you can streamline the process by bulk-uploading their data via a CSV file.
(You can download the exact Optiply CSV Template file here).
Best Practices for CSV Imports:
Always use the Template: This ensures you use the correct format and exact column headers.
Use UTF-8 Encoding: Files saved in standard ASCII may fail. Ensure your file is exported using UTF-8 encoding to avoid conversion errors.
Simplify the File: Only include the specific columns and data that actually need updates. Extraneous data can lead to processing errors.
Mandatory Columns:
supplierNameis the primary key! Optiply matches data based on the supplier's name, not their ID. Ensure every entry contains a valid supplier name exactly as it appears in the system, or the file will fail.
Common Import Challenges:
If you encounter a KeyError: 'id' error, it usually means your file encoding is wrong, or you tried to use Supplier IDs for column matching instead of the mandatory supplierName column.
❓ 6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why isn't Optiply generating my first purchase advice for a new supplier?
Optiply cannot calculate purchasing advice without knowing how long the delivery takes and how often you plan to order! Ensure the Lead Time and Reorder Period fields are filled out in the supplier's settings.
How do I send a purchase order to both my supplier's sales rep and their warehouse manager?
In the supplier's "E-mail Settings" field, simply enter both email addresses separated by a semicolon (e.g., sales@supplier.com; warehouse@supplier.com).