Suppliers
The Suppliers section in Silkline provides buyers with a centralized view of their suppliers, allowing for seamless management of supplier relationships, performance tracking, and streamlined communication. The page is designed to help procurement teams efficiently oversee their supplier base, track order fulfillment, and address supplier-related issues.
Skip sending
For suppliers (such as DigiKey, ULINE, McMaster-Carr, and Mouser) where buyers place orders through an eCommerce website, you can toggle on "Skip sending" on the supplier page to automatically mark orders as sent when the order is opened. When this setting is enabled, open Orders for that supplier will bypass the "New" tab and will automatically advance to the "Unconfirmed" tab where they can be marked as confirmed as applicable.
Editing a supplier
Silkline helps companies maintain important master data on suppliers such as their approval status and notes and required documentation.
For customers whose supplier master data comes from an external system (such as a connected ERP), some supplier fields may not be editable in Silkline.
To edit a supplier, click the pencil icon next to the Supplier's name in the title bar:
Supplier form fields
The supplier form is organized into several sections to help manage different aspects of supplier information:
Company Details
Name
Required. The supplier's legal or business name. This name will appear throughout Silkline when selecting suppliers.
Description
Optional. A description of the supplier and their capabilities. This can include information about what types of products or services they provide.
Tags
Optional. Tags to categorize and organize suppliers. Tags can be used for several purposes such as categorizing by capability/commodity group (e.g., services, sheet metal, 5-axis machined parts), indicating approval scope or quality level (e.g., Tier 1, Tier 2), or compliance status (e.g., ITAR). See the Tags section below for more details.
Primary Phone
Optional. The main phone number for contacting the supplier.
Website
Optional. The supplier's website URL. You can enter the URL with or without "https://" (e.g., "example.com" or "https://example.com").
Address
Optional. The supplier's physical address. Depending on your organization's settings, this may be a single text field or structured fields (Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City/Locality, State/Region, Postal Code, Country Code).
Approval Status
See the Approval Supplier Lists section below for detailed information about approval statuses, notes, and preferred status.
Approval Status
Optional. The supplier's approval status: Approved, Evaluation, Restricted, Prohibited, or None. See Approval Statuses below for details on each status.
Preferred
Optional. Mark approved suppliers as preferred vendors. Only suppliers with "Approved" status can be marked as preferred.
Archived
Optional. Archived suppliers will not appear in dropdown selections by default, but can still be accessed when viewing existing records that reference them.
Approval Notes
Optional. Add notes documenting the rationale or details of the supplier approval status. These notes appear in tooltips when hovering over the approval status badge throughout the application.
Allowed Pedigrees
Optional. When the supplier pedigree allow list is enabled for your organization, select which pedigrees (quality/traceability levels) are allowed for this supplier. This restricts which pedigrees can be selected when ordering from this supplier.
Order Defaults
These fields set default values that will be pre-populated when creating new purchase orders from this supplier. They can be overridden on individual orders.
Workflow
Optional. Select a default approval workflow for orders from this supplier. If not specified, the organization's default workflow will be used.
Terms & Conditions
Optional. Select default terms and conditions for orders from this supplier. These are legal terms that appear on the purchase order.
Payment Terms
Optional. Set default payment terms for orders from this supplier (e.g., NET 30, NET 60, Credit Card).
Delivery Terms
Optional. Set default delivery terms (Incoterms) for orders from this supplier (e.g., FOB Origin, DAP, DDP).
Delivery Mode
Optional. Set default delivery/shipping mode for orders from this supplier (e.g., Freight, Air, Ground).
Currency
Optional. Set default currency for orders from this supplier. If not specified, your organization's base currency will be used.
Additional Data
If your organization has configured custom fields for suppliers, they will appear in this section. Custom fields allow you to track organization-specific data about suppliers.
Documentation
See the Supplier Data section below for detailed information about tracking supplier documentation such as NDAs, contracts, certifications, and other important files.
Approval Supplier Lists
Silkline helps companies maintain an Approved Supplier List (ASL/AVL) and track the approval status and notes for each supplier. Approval statuses show up as badges throughout the app, such as when selecting a supplier on a Request.
Approval statuses
Approved
Suppliers that are fully approved.
Evaluation
Suppliers that you are currently onboarding or evaluating through qualification orders.
Restricted
Suppliers that are conditionally approved. This is useful when a supplier is in an onboarding or probation period, or if the supplier is only approved for certain pedigrees / quality levels.
Prohibited
Suppliers that are prohibited from future orders.
(None)
Supplier approval status has not been set.
Approval notes
Add notes documenting the rationale or details of the supplier approval status. Notes show up in the tooltip when overing over the approval status badge:
Preferred status
In addition to approval status, approved vendors can be marked as preferred, which is indicated with a plus icon next to the approved status badge:
Only approved vendors can be marked as preferred. Downgrading a vendor's approval status to Restricted, Prohibited, or none will automatically turn off the vendor's approval status.
Tags
Supplier tags are a useful way to categorize and organize suppliers. Tags are flexible and can be used for several purposes, such as:
Categorizing suppliers by capability / commodity group (e.g., services, sheet metal, 5-axis machined parts)
Indicating supplier approval scope or quality level (e.g., Tier 1, Tier 2)
Indicating compliance status (e.g., ITAR)
Tags can be used to select multiple suppliers at once when entering suppliers on a request. For example, a buyer could select the tag "sheet metal" to populate all suppliers with that tag.
Supplier Data
Supplier data provides a flexible way to store and track important data for a supplier, like contracts, NDAs, W9/payment details, certifications, etc. Each supplier data item includes the following fields:
Type
NDA, Certification, Financial, Contract, or Other
Name
The name or title of the supplier data item
Notes
Internal notes or additional details you wish to record for the item
Effective date
The date the item is effective (particularly useful for contacts)
Expiration date
The expiration date for the item (particularly useful for contracts)
Files
One or more file attachments
Several customers have requested notifications when a supplier data item (like an NDA) is expiring soon. We're planning to add this capability in the future!
Supplier Scorecard
Silkline automatically tracks key performance metrics for suppliers across four categories:
Performance Time Horizons
You can view performance metrics across different timeframes to understand both short-term trends and long-term reliability. The scorecard supports three time horizons:
3 Months (3m): Trailing quarter performance, useful for identifying recent changes in supplier performance.
12 Months (12m): Trailing year performance (default), providing a balanced view of consistent performance.
36 Months (36m): Long-term performance data covering up to the last three years of history.
Supplier scorecards update hourly. We use periodic refreshes instead of real-time calculations to maintain performance when analyzing large historical datasets.
Metrics Definitions
The following metrics are tracked for each supplier:
Responsiveness
Response Time
The time it takes for suppliers to confirm POs or submit check-ins
Order initial send or check-in creation date
PO Confirmation
The percentage of POs the supplier confirms
Order creation date
Check-in Completion
The percentage of check-ins that are completed, excluding canceled check-ins
Check-in creation date
Competitiveness
Time to Quote
The amount of time it takes for a supplier to submit a quote, measured as the difference between the creation of an RFQ and the issue date of a linked quote.
Quote issue or creation date
Bid Rate
The percentage of RFQs marked as complete, excluding canceled RFQs.
RFQ send date
Win Rate
The percentage of RFQs where a quote was converted to a Purchase Order, excluding canceled RFQs.
RFQ send date
Schedule
Original OTD
The percentage of line items where the first receiving event occurred on or before the Need Date
Line item receipt date
Latest OTD
The percentage of line items where the first receiving event occurred on or before the current ETA
Line item receipt date
Quality
Issue rate
The percentage of line items that have an issue ticket associated with the line.
Issue creation or line receipt date
Some metrics require configuration to display. Contact support@silkline.ai if you would like certain metrics enabled for your account.
Contacts
Store key contacts for each supplier, including primary and secondary points of contact. Primary points of contact as used as the default contacts when sending RFQs through Silkline.
Use tags to organize and identify contacts. For example, you could use have tags for billing, sales/quoting, quality, etc.
Silkline automatically attempts to enrich contact data such as name, job title, photo, and LinkedIn using third-party data sources. When creating a contact, you can simply enter the contact's email address and we'll attempt to fetch the rest of the contacts data. You can always manually input details by selecting "Enter Manually".
Transaction history
Silkline shows a transaction history for suppliers including:
Orders
Request for Quotes
Check-ins
See an overview of transaction data for a supplier and navigate to a particular item.
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