Create a Request: RFQ, RFP, or RFI
Choose the right request type, move through the wizard from Details to Review, publish, and start receiving structured, comparable bids.
What you'll learn
- Pick the right request type for what you are trying to decide
- Move through every wizard step and understand each decision
- Publish your request and know exactly what suppliers see
Most sourcing starts with an email. You write what you need, attach a spreadsheet, and send it to the handful of suppliers you already know. Replies come back over the next week in different formats, on different timelines, answering slightly different questions. Before you can compare anything, you are rebuilding it all by hand in a spreadsheet.
A Request on VEXORS replaces that. Every supplier you reach gets the same brief, the same line items to price, the same questions to answer, and the same deadline. When responses close, the bids are already comparable, because they were structured the same way from the start. And the criteria you set here are the criteria AI Scoring uses when the bids come in. Creating a request is the first step of every buyer cycle here. Everything that follows, receiving bids, AI Scoring, and the award, flows from the choices you make now.
Why this matters
Email is built for one-to-one conversation. Sourcing is multi-party and structured by nature: one brief to many suppliers, a consistent response format, and a record of who said what and when. A structured request gives you all three, plus an activity trail any manager or auditor can follow without reconstructing it from a folder of emails.
Choosing the right request type
The first choice you make is the request type. It is not cosmetic: it changes which steps appear in the wizard and what suppliers are expected to send back. Pick the one that matches what you actually need right now.
| Your situation | Use | What suppliers send back |
|---|---|---|
| I know exactly what I need and want competitive prices | RFQ | A price per line item against your Bill of Quantities, plus delivery terms. The most direct path to a comparable price. |
| I have a goal but I am open to how suppliers solve it | RFP | A proposed approach and a price for that approach. You evaluate on fit and method, not price alone. |
| I am not ready to buy. I want to understand the market first | RFI (Scale plan) | Capabilities and information only, with no pricing commitment. You can convert it to an RFP later without starting over. |
An RFI that you later convert to an RFP carries your information forward, so exploring the market first never means redoing your work. Note the tier: the RFI type card is available on Scale; on other plans it shows an upgrade hint.
Before you start
A few things make the flow smoother if you have them ready:
- You have permission to create and publish requests. Team members can be granted the same Requests permission to create alongside you.
- If you will invite specific suppliers, have their names ready, or plan to find them in Discover during the wizard.
- If your team uses approval steps, know who your approvers are. Requests route to them before they publish.
- If you want to add a Questionnaire, decide your evaluation criteria in advance. Designing good questions on the spot is harder than it looks.
- If you want AI to draft the request for you, check that you have available AI credits.
The wizard steps
The wizard walks you through up to five steps: Details, Requirements, BoQ, Questionnaire, and Review. The exact sequence depends on type and plan:
- An RFQ runs Details, Requirements, BoQ, Questionnaire, Review. The BoQ is the operative surface for a quote.
- An RFP runs Details, Requirements, Questionnaire, BoQ, Review: the proposal questions come before the pricing, because they frame it.
- An RFI has no BoQ: Details, Requirements, Questionnaire, Review. Its Questionnaire is available on every plan and needs at least one question to publish.
- The Questionnaire step on an RFQ or RFP is a Scale feature. On Explore and Grow the wizard runs Details, Requirements, BoQ, Review, and the Review step shows where the Questionnaire would be, with the upgrade path.
A step counter in the header ("Step 2 of 5") and a short banner on each step tell you where you are and what the step is for.
Your progress saves as you go, so you can leave and come back.
Open the wizard and pick a type
Go to Requests and select New Request. Choose your type from the three cards. The wizard opens at the Details step.
If you would rather start from a description, use AI Draft at the top of the wizard: describe what you need in plain language and VEXORS drafts a starting request for you to refine. On Scale you can also draft from an uploaded RFP or specification document, or import a full BoQ workbook. Each draft uses AI credits, and you can edit everything it produces. See the AI drafter guide for the full picture.
Details: name the request and set who can see it
This step sets the identity of the request and has the biggest downstream effect.
- Title: name it specifically enough that a supplier knows in seconds whether it is relevant. "Steel pipes for Phase 2, Q3" beats "Materials".
- Currency and Submission Deadline: the currency bids are compared in, and the date bidding closes.
- Clarification / Q&A deadline (optional): the date supplier questions close, on or before the submission deadline. Setting one keeps late-breaking questions from landing the night before bids are due.
- Working fields for your own organisation: a priority level, an internal reference, and a project reference, so the request slots into how your team already files work.
- Supplier Visibility is the key decision here. Invite specific suppliers keeps the request private to your list. Open to all suppliers broadcasts it to matching suppliers across the network, and unlocks once your company completes business verification; until then the option explains what is needed and links to your company settings.
Set a realistic deadline. For a detailed RFQ in a specialist category, give suppliers a couple of weeks. Very short windows reduce both the number and the quality of bids.
Requirements: category, terms, and what you need in words
Requirements captures what you need in words and the commercial conditions every bid must meet. Suppliers see all of it when they open your request.
- Category lives here. VEXORS uses it to match your request to suppliers; on an open request, it decides who sees it. Use AI Suggest to classify the request automatically from your title and requirements, and choose the most specific category that fits.
- Your written requirements: specifications, standards, quality expectations. Write them as real commercial terms, not internal notes, because suppliers read them directly.
- Commercial terms: Delivery Location, Payment Terms and their basis, Incoterms for cross-border goods, Late Delivery Tolerance (days), VAT treatment, and Quote Validity: how long each supplier must keep their quoted price firm after submitting, counted per supplier from their own submission date. Set it long enough to evaluate and award; the Bids tab later shows each bid's validity and warns you when a bid's prices have expired.
- Terms & Evaluation: your Terms & Conditions for suppliers and your Evaluation Criteria, both visible to suppliers. Suppliers respond to your terms on their bid (accept, accept with exceptions, or propose their own), and the evaluation flags anything other than a clean acceptance before you award. On a construction master, a separate Terms for your client field holds the text printed on the client bill; suppliers never see it.
- Conditions of Tender: the rules a bid must follow to be valid, stated up front. The Part bids setting decides whether a supplier may bid for part of the scope (a reduced quantity, an item they are not bidding, or a whole section they decline): Full scope required, Part bids accepted, or Not stated.
- Reference Documents: specs, drawings, or other documents visible to all invited suppliers. Save the draft first to attach them. On a construction master the same card reads Upload documents or a whole folder and feeds the project document library; see Manage project documents and drawings.
- Additional Fields: custom fields you fill (shared with suppliers or internal only) or that suppliers fill on their bid form.
BoQ: list what suppliers will price
The Bill of Quantities is what makes bids comparable: every supplier prices the same items in the same units. Group items into sections, add each line with a description, quantity, and unit, and optionally set an estimated price that only you see, as your own budget guide. If the bill already exists as a spreadsheet, import it instead of retyping it.
The Build your Bill of Quantities guide covers sections, units, importance, imports, and construction bills in full. Open it alongside this one if your list is detailed.
Each section carries a Bid response format: Itemized required (suppliers price every line individually) or One price for the section (breakdown required) (suppliers give one section price with a priced breakdown behind it that must reconcile to it). For construction tenders, the Construction bill toggle on this step adds retention, bonds, measurement standards, and construction line types and quantity bases. Two importers live here too: Import Spreadsheet inside a section, and Import full BoQ workbook (AI) for a whole workbook. And when the request is a whole project you will buy out trade by trade, Save & start project takes you from the wizard straight into the project workflow: see Run a construction project.
Questionnaire: evaluate beyond price
Scale If you need to judge suppliers on more than price, add a Questionnaire. Each question has an answer type and a weight, and you can mark any question as a Show Stopper. Answers feed into AI Scoring alongside the commercial score. On an RFP this step comes before the BoQ; on an RFI it is available on every plan.
The Add a Questionnaire guide covers question types, weights, show-stoppers, and the prequalification banks for construction trades.
Review and publish
The Review step shows the complete request exactly as a supplier will see it, plus the Scoring Weight Split between the commercial (BoQ) score and the questionnaire score, the Pre-Publish Insights panel (an advisory AI read of the request and every BoQ line, see Pre-Publish Insights), AI Supplier Matching, and the option to List publicly in the VEXORS tender directory. Read it as a supplier would before you commit. You have three choices:
- Publish Request publishes immediately. An open request appears in matching suppliers' opportunity feeds; a private one sends invitations to the suppliers you chose.
- Save Draft keeps your progress without showing the request to anyone.
- Submit for Approval appears when your team requires sign-off. The request holds until every approver has approved it, then publishes.
If Pre-Publish Insights left open findings, a Before you publish dialog steps in once with Review findings or Publish anyway. It never blocks you.
After publishing, you land on the request page with its status set to Published, an empty Bids tab waiting for responses, the Invitations tab showing anyone you invited, and a Q&A tab where bidders' questions will arrive.
What suppliers see when you publish
For an open request, within minutes it appears at the top of the opportunity feed for suppliers whose categories match yours. They see your title, category, deadline, currency, and your company name, but never your estimated prices. For a private request, only the suppliers you invited are notified and can open it.
Either way, a supplier can ask a question on the request's Q&A tab before bidding; you publish one answer to every bidder, and the asker stays anonymous to the others. A private chat also exists for matters that concern one supplier only. See Run Q&A and announcements.
What comes next
Once your request is live, the next move is to manage who can bid and then prepare to evaluate. The category you set on this request and on your company profile together decide which suppliers discover an open request, so a complete profile and a specific category produce a more relevant pool.
Making your request work
Following the steps correctly is not the same as running an effective request. A few things separate a strong request from a merely valid one:
- A title that names the category, rough quantity, and timeline lets a supplier decide to bid in seconds. Vague titles attract fewer bids.
- On an open request, a precise category matters more than it looks. A category set to "Manufacturing" reaches a wide but loosely relevant pool; "Structural steel fabrication" reaches the suppliers who can actually deliver.
- The deadline shapes behaviour. Too short, and specialist suppliers cannot check availability and price accurately, so you get fewer, weaker bids.
- Start with an RFI when you are entering a new category or market. Converting it to an RFP later keeps your work; cancelling and restarting a premature RFQ does not.
- State the part-bids rule and each section's bid response format deliberately. A supplier who declines a section you assumed was covered, or who itemizes a section you wanted as one price, is a comparison problem you created on this step.
- Watch the Invitations tab after publishing. If confirmations are low as the deadline approaches, add more suppliers from Discover now rather than discovering the gap after bidding closes.
Next steps
Related guides