For buyers· Guide 3 of 15

Add a Questionnaire

Collect structured answers from every bidding supplier and let AI Scoring factor them in alongside price, so the best supplier wins, not just the cheapest.

What you'll learn

Understand how questionnaire answers feed into AI Scoring
Design questions with the right answer types and weights
Use Show Stopper questions to disqualify non-compliant bids automatically
Know the rules around weights summing to 100%

~7 min

Scale The Questionnaire step is available on the Scale plan for RFQs and RFPs. RFIs include a Questionnaire step on every plan, because an RFI needs at least one question to be published.

Price is one dimension. A supplier who quotes 10% lower but lacks a required safety certification, cannot deliver in your country, or has never handled your order volume is not actually a good deal. The Questionnaire turns those concerns into structured data that AI Scoring can rank alongside price.

When a supplier submits a bid, they answer every question you set. Their answers combine with their commercial pricing into a single score from 0 to 100. You get a ranked list that reflects both what they offered and whether they meet your criteria, without reading through every bid manually.

Why this matters

Without a Questionnaire, AI Scoring can only compare price, quantity, and delivery. With one, it can weigh compliance, technical capability, experience, or any other factor you define. The weight you assign each question tells the system how much it should shift the score: a question worth 40% has twice the scoring influence of one worth 20%.

When to add a Questionnaire

Good use cases

You are sourcing a specialist service where supplier experience matters as much as price. You have a regulatory requirement that every supplier must certify compliance with before you can award them. You want to compare suppliers on lead time or warranty terms in a structured way rather than reading through free-text notes. Any of these calls for a Questionnaire.

Question type	Best for
Yes / No	Compliance checks, certifications, binary eligibility criteria. Yes/No questions are the only type that can be marked as Show Stoppers.
Text	Open-ended capability descriptions, methodology explanations, references. Scored by AI, not by a fixed rule.
Number	Years of experience, number of past projects, delivery lead time in days. Scored against a rule you define (greater than, less than, between).
Single Select / Multiple Select	Preferred payment terms, location coverage, service tiers. You define the options; the system scores against your preferred answer.
Date	Earliest start date, warranty expiry, last audit date. Scored against a date rule.

Answer type determines how the question is scored. Choose the type that matches the data you actually need.

Before you start

For an RFQ or RFP, your request must be on the Scale plan for the Questionnaire to appear as its own wizard step. On Explore and Grow, the Questionnaire is not a step in the wizard at all: it appears as a locked gate card on the Review step with an upgrade prompt.
Plan your evaluation criteria before you open the wizard. Good questions come from knowing what would change your decision, not from thinking of things to ask.
If you weight your questions, the weights must add up to 100%, or you can leave them all at 0 for an unscored questionnaire. Decide the relative importance of each area before you start adding questions.
If you want AI to suggest questions based on your request category, have your request type and Requirements details filled in: the suggestion feature uses them as context.

Adding a Questionnaire to your request

Open the Questionnaire step
Where Questionnaire sits in the step list depends on the request type. On a Scale RFQ it comes after BoQ. On a Scale RFP it comes before BoQ, since RFP proposals are evaluated on approach before pricing detail. On an RFI there is no BoQ step at all, so Questionnaire follows Requirements directly. On Explore and Grow, RFQs and RFPs skip the step entirely and show the Questionnaire as a gate card on Review instead.
At the top of the step you will see the AI Question Suggestions panel for your request category. You can load suggestions to get a starting set of questions, or build from scratch.
To load AI suggestions, select Load suggestions. A confirmation dialog shows the credit cost before you confirm. Suggested questions come pre-categorised and can be added to your Questionnaire in one click. Show Stopper suggestions are grouped at the top.
Add and configure each question
Select Add Question to create a question. Each question card expands to show its configuration fields:
- Question text: the actual question the supplier reads and answers.
- Answer Type: choose the format that matches the answer you need (Yes/No, Text, Number, Date, Single Select, or Multiple Select).
- Category: label the question as Compliance, Technical, Commercial, or General. This organises questions in your review view.
- Weight: the percentage this question contributes to the questionnaire score. Weights must total exactly 100%, unless you leave them all at 0 for an unscored questionnaire. A weight tally at the top of the step shows you the running total.
- Scoring Mode: how the answer is evaluated. Text answers are always scored by AI (the system reads and interprets them). Yes/No answers are always scored by rule (matched against your expected answer). Number, Date, and choice types let you choose between rule-based and AI scoring.
- A required toggle, shown on the card as either Supplier must answer or Supplier may skip: sets whether the supplier is blocked from submitting their bid until they answer this question.
- An Options editor for Single Select and Multiple Select questions: define the list of choices the supplier picks from.
Use Quick add at the top of the questions card to insert common compliance and capability questions without configuring them from scratch. Quick-add questions come with sensible defaults you can adjust.
Configure the scoring rule or AI guide
For rule-based questions, you tell the system what the right answer looks like:
- Yes/No: select the expected answer (Yes or No). The system scores the highest for the expected answer.
- Number: set a condition (greater than, less than, between, or equals) and the target value.
- Date: set a date condition (before, after, or between) and the target date.
- Single or Multiple Select: add the answer options first, then select which option(s) represent the preferred answer.
For AI-scored questions (all Text questions, and any other type you set to AI mode), add an AI Scoring Guide: a plain-language description of what a strong answer looks like. For example: "A strong answer describes a documented QC process with at least three checkpoints, references to relevant standards, and evidence of third-party audits in the past two years." The more specific your guide, the more consistently the AI scores answers.
Or start from a Prequalification bank
Instead of building every question by hand, you can add from VEXORS's curated Prequalification banks: ready-made GCC construction question sets covering licensing, HSE, QA/QC, financial standing, references, and insurance. Tick the banks or sections you want, then unlock them with an AI suggestion run (credit-gated, the same way individual AI Question Suggestions are). Once unlocked, the added questions are yours to edit, reweight, or remove like any question you built from scratch.
This is the fastest way to put a solid compliance baseline into a construction-category Questionnaire without writing the licensing and safety questions yourself.
Mark Show Stopper questions
Show Stopper questions apply only to Yes/No answer types. To mark one, toggle the Show Stopper switch on the question card after you have set the expected answer.
When a supplier answers a Show Stopper question against your expected answer, for example, they answer "No" to "Do you hold the required safety licence?", their bid is disqualified. It appears in the Bids tab but is excluded from AI Scoring and the ranking.
Mark a question as a Show Stopper only when a wrong answer is genuinely disqualifying, not just unfavourable. Use it for hard regulatory requirements, not preferences. A Show Stopper that knocks out most of your suppliers defeats the purpose of running an open request.
Check the weight total and save
The weight tally at the top of the step shows your running total. It turns green at exactly 100% and red if you go over. You can advance to the Review step once the total is exactly 100%, or left at 0 for an unscored questionnaire.
Common weight distributions: give the most weight to the criteria that would genuinely change your shortlist. If price matters most and the Questionnaire is a compliance filter, keep question weights modest (15--30% each). If supplier capability is the primary decision factor, let those questions carry more weight.
When the total reaches 100%, select Next to move to the Review step.

What the supplier sees

When a supplier opens your request to bid, the Questionnaire appears as a required section of the bid form. Each question is shown with its category label and answer type. The supplier does not see the weights you assigned or whether a question is a Show Stopper. They see the question text and the answer format, and they must answer all required questions before they can submit their bid.

Changing the Questionnaire after publishing

While the request is a Draft, you can add, remove, and reweight questions freely. After you publish, changing the Questionnaire is handled as an amendment, and suppliers who have started or submitted a bid are asked to review the change. Once the request is awarded, the Questionnaire is fixed.

It is still worth planning your questions carefully before you publish, so suppliers bid against a stable brief.

How it connects to AI Scoring

When you run AI Scoring on the AI Scoring tab, the system calculates two sub-scores for every eligible bid: a commercial score (based on price, quantities, delivery, and Importance levels) and a questionnaire score (based on the answers suppliers provided, weighted by your question weights). These combine into an overall score from 0 to 100 and a rank across all bids.

The split between the two is configurable, with a default of 60% Commercial and 40% Questionnaire. The Review step shows the active split as a footnote so you can confirm it before you publish. Raise the Questionnaire share if supplier qualifications matter more than price for this request; raise the Commercial share if you are mainly filtering on compliance and price is still the deciding factor.

What good looks like

Five to eight focused questions usually produce a more reliable score than fifteen diluted ones. More questions with small weights reduce the signal from any individual criterion.
Every question should be something you would actually read and compare manually if you had to. If you would not, it does not belong in the Questionnaire.
Show Stopper questions should map to hard regulatory or contractual requirements, not preferences. One or two is usually right.
Weights should reflect the actual importance of each criterion to your sourcing decision, not be distributed evenly for tidiness.
The AI Scoring Guide for text questions should describe a strong answer in concrete terms, not vague quality language.

Next steps

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