In this guide we show you how to invite suppliers to start collaborating on Projects and Opportunities and how to manage your pending invitations. Suppliers join the IAND platform for free.
Supplier Company Profiles are either automatically created from your finance data import or manually created for new suppliers. This guide helps you find your existing supplier or invite a prospective supplier, as well as how to send reminders or cancel an invitation.
Jump to:
- Before you invite a new supplier
- If the supplier is in your Companies Index
- If the supplier is not in your Companies Index
- After you invite a supplier
- Managing pending supplier invitations
Before you invite a new supplier
You should first check if the supplier you want to invite has already been added to IAND through a previous financial data import. To do this, go to your Companies Index, and search for the supplier's name in the search bar.
TIP! The search bar supports partial matches on supplier names, when one name is fully contained within another. For example, searching for 'Supplier A' will return 'Supplier A Ltd' in the results.
This means you can search for a supplier even if you are not sure of their exact name on IAND. We recommend searching without the Ltd/Limited for this reason.
If the supplier is in your Companies Index
Check their status:
- Supplier is Inactive / Never set up: Click 'Send invite' in the dot menu under the 'Actions' column to invite the supplier directly to their Company Profile page.
- Supplier is Inactive / Offboarded: Click 'Re-invite' from the dot menu after you have viewed the reasons for offboarding on the supplier profile (Governance / Onboarding status).
- Supplier is Live: The supplier relationship is being managed, but you may wish to review the supplier account team using this IAND Academy guide.
- Supplier is Invited: The supplier will be reminded of their invite on day 2, 7, 14 and 21. You can however remind the supplier to join IAND from the dot menu under 'Actions'.
If the supplier is not in your Companies Index
Click the 'Invite a new supplier' button.
Step 1: Create a new supplier profile
1. Enter your supplier's Company name.
2. If the supplier is based in the UK, search for their name or Company registration number. Select an option from the search results, which are linked to the gov.uk Companies House register.
Note: Once live, your supplier is able to change their Company name. Either you or your supplier can add or edit the Companies House number at any time.
Step 2: Invite your point of contact
You can choose to invite the supplier immediately, or pause at this point and only create their profile. Creating a profile will enable you to start your compliance and financial checks before onboarding.
If you are not ready to invite and onboard the supplier click 'Skip invitation'.
Or
1. Fill in the name and email address of the supplier contact you want to invite to the new supplier Company Profile on IAND.
2. Write a brief custom message that will be sent with your invite to the supplier. Please note that any formatting will be removed from the final message. TIP! Enhance the onboarding experience by explaining why you need the supplier to sign up, so that they are clear on the priority. For example: "To include you in the tender opportunity being issued next week, we will need you to sign up and create your profile".
Finally, click 'Submit' to either create a profile or create a profile and invite the supplier. You will be asked to confirm your action.
After you invite a supplier
Once you have completed Steps 1 & 2, your supplier will receive an invite email. They only need to complete a short set of fields to join the IAND platform. There is no cost for suppliers to join.
Example invite email content
We notify you when a supplier is live. You will receive an email from IAND as soon as your supplier has joined our platform. You are now ready to invite your supplier to Opportunities, request Compliance documents and more.
Managing pending supplier invitations
Finding your pending invites
Hover over Companies in the navigation bar and select Pending invitations from the dropdown. You can also access this page from the link at the top left of your Companies Index.
This will take you to a dedicated list of all supplier companies that have a pending invitation from your organisation. You can see when they were invited and who the invitation went to.
Send a reminder to your supplier or cancel a supplier invitation
If you wish to remind your supplier of their invitation, invite a different colleague from within the same supplier organisation or cancel your invitation to a supplier, find the invitation in the 'Outstanding supplier invitations' list and click on it.
This will take you to a page where you can choose from three options:
- 'Remind' will allow you to manually send an email reminder to the original recipient. IAND also automatically sends a supplier invitation reminder after 2, 7, 14 and 21 days.
- 'Send to another person' will give you the option to send the invite to a different user, other than the original recipient (e.g. if you have a new point of contact) and add a custom message.
- 'Cancel invitation' will cancel your invitation to that supplier, making any invitation links that have been sent expire. This will notify the supplier that their invitation has been cancelled. Cancelling an invitation does not stop you from inviting the supplier again in the future.
TIP! You can also remind or cancel supplier invitations directly from the 'Outstanding supplier invitations' list by clicking the dot menu next to the invitation and selecting an option from the drop-down.
