What is an RFQ and when to use it?
An RFQ (Request for Quotation) in a purchasing context is a price request sent to a supplier or manufacturer for the purchase price of a specific item. You use it when the item has no fixed price in your catalog — because it’s non-standard, made to order, or the price changes too often to keep in a list (as in steel).
The RFQ is the foundation of pricing “on request” items: only after receiving the purchase price can you apply margin and quote the customer. So the efficiency of the RFQ process directly affects how fast you return an offer.
How to phrase a price request to get a fast reply?
A manufacturer replies faster to a request they can quote without asking back. A good RFQ contains:
- An unambiguous item description — manufacturer index if you know it, otherwise full parameters (DN/PN, material, dimension, standard).
- Quantity and unit — price depends on volume, so without a quantity you get “it depends”.
- Expected lead time — so the manufacturer can say up front whether they’ll make it.
- Your reply deadline — “please quote by [date]”, because you also have a deadline to the customer.
- Context — whether it’s one-off or a sign of repeat orders (it affects the price).
How to track many RFQs at once so nothing is lost?
The main pain with multiple suppliers isn’t writing the requests, it’s tracking them. With a dozen open RFQs it’s easy to forget who already replied and who needs a nudge — and the offer stalls because one purchase price is missing.
An efficient process requires every RFQ to have a status (sent / waiting / quoted), to be linked to a specific item and case, and to remind you when a deadline passes. By hand you can manage this in a spreadsheet for a few requests; at a dozen a day you need a system that runs the loop for you.
How to close the purchase price in the offer?
The last step is turning the purchase price into the offer price: after receiving the price from the manufacturer you apply margin (per the per-product mode) and insert the ready item into the draft. This is where margin most often “leaks” — when the purchase price arrived late and the item stayed in the offer with a stale or zero margin.
OferIQ runs this loop end-to-end: for “on request” items it sends a price request, the manufacturer enters the purchase price via the manufacturer portal (/wycena/:token), and the system applies margin and inserts the price into the offer — all tied by a case number (ref_code). As a result no RFQ is lost, and margin doesn’t depend on whether someone remembered to return to an email. See how it looks on the product page (/en/product/), especially for volatile-price industries like steel and metallurgy (/en/industries/stal-hutnictwo/).