Commercial Agreements & Catalog

Commercial Agreements & Catalog

The agreements catalog (menu Purchasing → Agreements) collects the currently valid negotiated prices you have with each supplier, so you can check them quickly before going out to request quotes again. Today the only source is manual import of price lists; in the future agreements will also be generated automatically from an awarded tender or from an express quotation.

Enabling it

This is an organization-level module. If you don't see "Agreements" in the menu, ask an admin of your organization to enable it from the account settings.

Importing a price list

1. From the agreements list, choose Import list and upload an Excel or CSV file.
2. The AI automatically proposes a column mapping (which column is code, description, price, currency, etc.). You can review and correct the mapping before continuing.
3. A preview is shown with the valid rows ready to import and, separately, the rows with problems (missing price, duplicate code, etc.) so you can fix or discard them.
4. You confirm the import specifying the supplier, validity period (from/to) and currency of the agreement. The agreement is created with all its items and becomes available in the catalog.

Catalog search

From the search tab you can ask "do I have a price for this?": search by item name or code and the system shows every valid agreement that covers it, marking which one is the best option (most convenient price) among the available suppliers.

Agreement detail

Opening a specific agreement shows its items (with search and pagination), the price history of each item (to see whether it went up or down over time), and the option to cancel it if it's no longer valid.

Expiration indicator

In the list, each agreement shows a color indicator based on its validity: active, about to expire, or expired, so you can tell at a glance which ones are worth renegotiating.

What happens when a PR matches the catalog?

If your organization has automatic purchase order generation enabled (in addition to the catalog itself), when a PR is created the system first checks whether any of its items already has a valid catalog price. For every supplier with covered items, a draft purchase order is generated without needing to request quotes again, and you'll get a notification about it.

That draft order is there for your review: open it from its own view, where you can also see which other supplier alternatives were available for the same item (price transparency), and issue it from there once you agree. If you'd rather not use it, you can revert the draft: the PR goes back to its previous status and you follow the normal quoting path instead.

If the PR has some items in the catalog and others that aren't, coverage is partial: the draft order is generated only for what's covered, and the rest of the items follow the normal supplier quoting process.

Express agreements

When you award a quotation, the system checks whether the supplier kept the same prices they had been using (for example, if their reply said something like "I'll hold these prices for 60 days") and proposes creating an express agreement with a single click — no need to manually import a list. Before confirming it you can edit the proposed validity period. The agreement becomes available in the catalog just like any other.

Revalidating expired prices

If an express agreement expires and you later create a PR with those same items, the system doesn't hold up that quotation: it asks the supplier whether they still hold that price in parallel to the normal quotation for that PR (same email, same reply you were already going to get). If the supplier confirms the price is unchanged, the catalog is extended automatically with a new validity period. If they quote a different price, the change isn't applied on its own — it's left pending your approval from the agreement detail page, where you can see the difference before deciding.

Agreement tender

When creating a tender you can choose its purpose: "standard" (a one-off purchase) or "agreement" (you're looking to lock in prices for the catalog). With the agreement purpose, each item also carries a material code and, if you have purchase history for that code, the system shows a suggested annual consumption (which you can adjust). You can also import the items from Excel instead of entering them one by one.

What the supplier sees

A supplier invited to an agreement tender can respond in three equivalent ways: download an Excel template with the items already pre-loaded and fill in their prices, upload their own price list (Excel or CSV) and let the AI match it against the requested items, or enter prices directly in the proposal grid. For both file-based options, before confirming they see a validation screen where they review which item each row was matched to (and can fix any the AI couldn't match with confidence) before submitting the proposal.

Consumption-weighted comparison

When the tender's items have annual consumption loaded, the comparison between suppliers doesn't just show price per item: it builds an annual basket (price × consumption for each item) and calculates, for each supplier, what percentage of items they cover and what percentage of total spend that coverage represents — useful for spotting the supplier who covers few items but high-consumption ones, or the other way around.

Awarding by item to the catalog

Awarding an agreement tender is done per item, not per whole supplier: for each item you choose which supplier to award it to (there can be several different winners within the same tender). No purchase orders are generated: each winning supplier gets a new agreement in the catalog (with the items awarded to them), with the validity period you set and, if applicable, a price adjustment clause for that period.

The catalog maintains itself

Before an agreement expires, the system checks every day whether it's worth preparing a renewal: if one is coming due, it automatically builds a draft agreement tender with the items and the real annual consumption for that period (taken from your purchase orders), with suggested suppliers based on history. You get a notification to review it — the tender stays in draft, nobody launches it for you: you publish it once you agree with the proposed items and suppliers.

If the agreement has an agreed adjustment clause (for example, "review every 6 months"), when that date arrives the system automatically writes to the supplier asking them to confirm or update their prices. The same happens proactively for express agreements before they expire: there's no need to wait for a new PR to ask the supplier whether they still hold the price.

Price control report

When the supplier replies with new prices (for example, attaching an updated list), the system builds a control report item by item: how much each price changed and, if you have a reference index configured (inflation or another one), whether that change exceeds it or stays within what's expected. Items flagged as "exceeds the index" are the ones worth reviewing more closely before approving.

Approval is done per item: you can accept all the changes, accept only some and leave the rest at the previous price, or reject the whole request. Approved items update the catalog with the new price and extend its validity; rejected or unselected items keep the price they already had. Either way, the supplier gets an email with the outcome of your decision.

Activity tray

Everything the catalog's automatic maintenance does (renewals prepared, update requests sent, supplier confirmations, reports ready, approvals and rejections) gets logged. From the general catalog you have an activity tab showing what's pending review across all your agreements, and from each specific agreement's detail page you'll find its own timeline with everything that happened to that particular agreement.