Save and reuse request templates
Turn a request you run often into a reusable template, manage your library, and start a new request from a template so you never rebuild the same scope, Bill of Quantities, and Questionnaire twice.
What you'll learn
- Create a reusable template that carries your standard scope, line items, and questions
- Manage your template library: edit, duplicate, and delete
- Start a new request from a template and finish in a fraction of the time
If you source the same kinds of things on a regular cycle, you already know the pain. Every quarter you open a fresh request and rebuild the same scope from memory: the same delivery terms, the same payment terms, the same Bill of Quantities, the same evaluation questions. You copy the last one, strip out the dates, hope you did not miss anything, and start again. The setup is identical every time, but you pay the full setup cost every time.
A template removes that cost. You define the reusable parts of a request once, the title pattern, request type, category, scope, commercial terms, Bill of Quantities, and Questionnaire, and save it. From then on, starting a new request is a single click that drops all of those defaults into a live request, ready for you to set the deadline and choose suppliers. The repetitive work is done. You spend your time on what actually changes.
Why this matters
Consistency is the quiet advantage of templates. When every recurring request uses the same structured Bill of Quantities and the same Questionnaire, your bids stay comparable not just within one cycle but across cycles. You can hold this quarter's prices against last quarter's because the line items lined up. Templates also protect your team: a junior buyer starting from your approved template inherits your standards instead of guessing at them.
Templates are a Scale feature
Scale Request templates are available on the Scale plan. On Explore and Grow you create each request from scratch in the wizard. If templates would save you real time every cycle, they are one of the clearest reasons to move to Scale.
What a template stores, and what it does not
A template captures the reusable shape of a request. It deliberately leaves out the parts that are specific to a single cycle, because those are exactly the things you should decide fresh each time.
| Stored in the template | Chosen fresh each time |
|---|---|
| Title and request type (RFQ, RFP, or RFI) | Submission deadline |
| Category and currency | Which suppliers are invited |
| Scope: requirements, delivery and payment terms, Incoterms, quote validity | Team members assigned to the request |
| Bill of Quantities sections and line items | Whether it publishes immediately or routes for approval |
| Questionnaire questions and weights |
Saving a template, start to finish
You build a template in the same wizard you already know from creating a request, so there is nothing new to learn. The only differences are that there is no deadline, no supplier selection, and the final button says Create Template instead of Publish.
Open your template library
Go to Requests in the sidebar, then open Templates. Your saved templates appear as cards, each showing its request type, title, and a quick summary of how much it contains, the number of Bill of Quantities sections, questions, and the category. Select New Template to build one.
Describe the template so your team can tell them apart
A template has one extra field that a live request does not: a Template Description. This is an internal note shown on the templates list so your team can tell a "Standard terms RFQ" apart from a "Sensitive single-source RFP" at a glance. It is never shown to suppliers.
Then fill in the Details exactly as you would for a real request: title, type, category, and currency. Use a title pattern you can reuse, since you can adjust it on each live request.
Set the reusable scope, Bill of Quantities, and Questionnaire
Move through Scope, Bill of Quantities, and Questionnaire just as you would in a normal request. Everything you enter here becomes the default for every request you start from this template.
Put your real standard terms in: typical delivery location, your usual payment terms, the Incoterms you trade on, and how long a quoted price should stay valid. Build the Bill of Quantities with the line items you order most often. If you evaluate on more than price, add your standard Questionnaire questions and weights now.
A template is worth the most when it carries your hard-won defaults, the exact units you buy in, the show-stopper questions that screen out unqualified suppliers, the payment terms you negotiated. The more of your standard knowledge lives in the template, the less anyone has to remember on each cycle.
Review and create
The Review step shows the full template the way it will seed a request. Read it through, then select Create Template. It saves to your library and is immediately available to every team member who can create requests.
Managing your template library
Each template card has the controls you need to keep your library tidy. Templates change as your standards do, so expect to revise them over time.
- Use Template starts a new live request from the template. This is the main action, covered in the next section.
- Duplicate creates a copy, named with "(copy)", so you can branch a near-identical variant without disturbing the original. Use it when a new template is "the standard one, but for cross-border orders".
- The edit control opens the template back in the wizard so you can update its defaults. Editing a template never changes any request you already created from it.
- The delete control removes a template. VEXORS asks you to confirm first, because deletion cannot be undone. Again, requests already created from the template are untouched.
You can search your library by title and filter by request type (RFQ, RFP, or RFI) using the tabs, which is useful once you have built up more than a handful.
Starting a request from a template
This is the payoff. From the templates list, select Use Template on the one you want. VEXORS creates a new request pre-filled with everything the template stored, scope, Bill of Quantities, Questionnaire, and commercial terms, and takes you straight to that request.
From there you do only the work that is genuinely new for this cycle: set the Submission Deadline, choose whether it is open to all suppliers or invite-only, pick your suppliers, assign team members, and publish (or submit for approval if your team requires sign-off). The request you create is a normal, independent request. It is no longer linked to the template, so editing it later changes only that request.
Suppliers never see your templates or know that a request started from one. To a supplier, a request created from a template is indistinguishable from one built by hand. They see the same published brief, the same Bill of Quantities to price, and the same questions to answer. Your internal time-savings stay internal.
What good looks like
A well-run template library is small and deliberate, not a graveyard of half-finished drafts.
- Keep one template per recurring sourcing pattern, not one per past request. If two templates differ only by a single line item, duplicate-and-edit a variant or just adjust the live request.
- Revisit templates when your terms change. A payment term you renegotiated should be updated in the template once, so every future request inherits it automatically.
- Use the template description field honestly. "Standard, approval-exempt" versus "High-value, routes for approval" saves a teammate from picking the wrong starting point.
- Lean on duplicate before you build from scratch. Most new templates are a small variation on one you already trust.
Next steps
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