Surrogate Bids

If your vendors don’t have access to their portals, you can submit bids on behalf of them using the Surrogate Bids feature for Request for Quotes in Zoho Procurement.

Enable Surrogate Bids

To create bids on behalf of your vendors, you need to enable Surrogate Bids for your organization. Here’s how:

• Go to Settings in the top right corner of the page.
• Click Request for Quotes under Procurement.
• In the Preferences tab, check Allow users to add bids on behalf of vendors.
• Click Save.

Create a Surrogate Bid for a Vendor

To create a surrogate bid for a vendor:

• Go to Request for Quotes under Procurement.
• Click the More icon at the top and select Published.
• Click View Details next to the request for quote for which you want to create a surrogate bid.
• Go to the Vendors tab.
• Click the More icon next to the vendor for whom you want to create the surrogate bid and click + Create Bid. You’ll be redirected to the Create Bid page.
• Enter the following details provided by the vendor in the Bid Details section:
  • Enter the Bid Quantity and the Price per Quantity for each item. The Item Total will be calculated based on the values entered in these fields.
  • Enter the Delivery Date and the Vendor Notes.
• Click Upload File in the Bid Documents section to upload the documents provided by the vendor. You can add up to five documents.
• Click Submit once you’ve entered the required details.
• Click Confirm in the pop-up that appears.

A bid will created for the vendor and you can view its details in the Vendor Responses tab. If the preference to allow vendors to create multiple bids is enabled, you can follow the same process to create additional surrogate bids for this vendor.

Download a Surrogate Bid

You can download the surrogate bid created for a vendor. Here’s how:

• Go to Request for Quotes under Procurement.
• Click the More icon at the top and select Published.
• Click View Details next to the request for quote for which you created a surrogate bid.
• Go to the Vendors Responses tab.
• In the Vendor Summary view, under the Latest Bid Details column, click the count next to Total. The Bids Made pane will appear.
• Click View Bid next to the bid you want to download.
• Click Download Bid on the page that appears.

Disable Surrogate Bids

To disable Surrogate Bids for Request for Quotes:

• Go to Settings in the top right corner of the page.
• Click Request for Quotes under Procurement.
• In the Preferences tab, uncheck Allow users to add bids on behalf of vendors.
• Click Save.