In the Vendor Portal, all users, across all roles (administrator, vendor-approver, user) can start the vendor onboarding process. There are three ways to start the onboarding: invite existing vendors, invite new vendors (if approval routing is enabled and should be skipped) and add a vendor manually.
Onboarding existing Vendors
All already created Vendors, will hold the status 'Ready to Invite'. To invite an existing Vendor, use the 'Invite' button:
The system will prompt the following popup window:
On "Invite", the system will send out an email to the email address as provided inside the popup by inviting the Vendor to onboard. By default, the system is using the email address as stored inside NetSuite. Feel free to update it as required. An email with the subject '{Company Name} Vendor Portal Onboarding' with a 'Go to Onboarding' link will be sent to the vendor.
Onboarding new Vendors
To invite a new vendor, two options are available: "Invite New" and "Add Manually". Use the "Invite New" option to invite a vendor for which you would like to skip the approval routing (when enabled). The only data required are a company name, email address and the subsidiary the vendor should be part of. Once all details are populated, the system will activate the "Invite" button.
Upon invite, the Vendor record will be saved inside the Vendor Portal with the status "Pending onboarding". The vendor’s status (Pending Onboarding) indicates that the system is waiting for the vendor to complete onboarding by filling out the onboarding form.
If you already have more details (master data) of your vendor, use the 'Add Manually' option instead.
Once recorded, the system will save the Vendor record inside the Vendor Portal with status "Ready to Invite". If approval routing is enabled, the system will save the Vendor record with status 'Draft Pending approval'. Unless the new record is approved, the system will not allow users to proceed with onboarding invitation.
Vendor Onboarding Steps
The process on the Vendor side is intuitive. In the narrative below, onboarded will be the Vendor named "Hotel Royal". The "Go to onboarding" link, takes the Vendor to the following onboarding form:
The first three fields (First Name, Last Name, and Account Email) will be used for creating the first Vendor user with the role of owner. Once recorded, the Vendor Portal will active the "Let's work together" button.
Upon click, the next step for a Vendor is to verify the account.
An email with the subject '{Company Name} Vendor Portal Activation' containing the 'Activate Account' link will be sent to the Vendor user, requesting activation.
On 'Activate Account' link, the Vendor user will be redirected to a page where they can set a new password.
The registration is completed once the following confirmation is received.
This step completes the Vendor activation user account.
Vendor company profile
Once the password is successfully created, the Vendor can login to their created account. The initial Dashboard of the Vendor side holds three sections:
- Vendor created - confirmation section
- Invite contacts - as action request and
- Update your company profile
A Vendor can invite contacts from their accounting, legal department to help them complete the profile update process. A contact can be invited by selecting 'Invite contacts' from the dashboard itself. The Vendor Portal takes the user to the 'Contacts' page, which holds a list of all active contacts.
'New contact' invite, prompts the following popup as a request to store contact details and invite a new user.
The user invited, will receive an email with request to onboard. The onboarding steps only hold a request to create a password upon account activation.
Apart of the contact list, the "Update Profile" section consists of two additional sublists named 'General' and 'Bank Details'.
The 'General' section consists of two separate sub sections: Company details and Legal information.
Multiple bank accounts can be recorded inside the 'Bank Details' section.
Once any of the fields is updated, 'Save change'" will be activated for the user to save created updates.