How the RfQ Process Works: From Specification to Purchase Order
The RfQ process on PrintOffer turns a print specification into comparable offers from producers who can actually make the job, and then into a purchase order. It runs in five stages: specify, publish, collect offers, award, and produce. Each stage has rules worth knowing before you write your first request, because the specification you enter decides which producers ever see it.
What an RfQ is, and what it is not
A Request for Quotation is not an order and not an enquiry. It is a structured description of a print job, published to the producers whose stated capabilities match it, with a deadline attached. Producers answer with a price and a lead time. You compare, you award, and the accepted offer becomes a purchase order.
The difference from emailing three printers is that every producer answers the same question. When four quotes arrive against one specification, the differences between them are real differences in price and capability, not differences in what each printer assumed you meant.
Stage one: the specification
An RfQ carries the following, and each field does work:
Product type. This is the single most important field, because matching is built on it. A producer sees your request only if that product type is listed in their company profile. Choose the type that describes the job, not the closest thing to your industry. Quantities. You can ask for several at once, for example 500, 1,000, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000. Producers quote each one. This is how you find the break point where unit price stops falling, and it costs you nothing to ask. Delivery scope. Three settings, and they change who is matched:- Domestic matches producers based in the delivery country.
- Regional narrows that further to a region inside the country.
- International matches producers who have declared they ship to the delivery country, wherever they are based.
Stage two: publishing
Until you publish, the request is a draft and nobody sees it. Publishing does three things at once.
It finds the producers whose profile matches the product type and the delivery scope. It notifies them, in the application and by email. And it sends you a receipt telling you how far the request reached, including the case where it reached nobody.
That last one deserves attention. If your request matched zero producers, that is not a failure of the market, it is usually a mismatch between the product type you chose and the profiles that exist. The receipt tells you immediately rather than leaving you to notice a week later that no offers arrived.
Stage three: the quoting window
While the request is open, matched producers can submit offers. Each producer submits one offer per request.
Producers who have not answered are reminded on a schedule rather than a whim. There is a periodic nudge, capped so that nobody is contacted indefinitely, and a single final reminder once the deadline is close. A producer receives at most one reminder per cycle, and a producer who has already offered is never reminded at all.
The window closes at the deadline. After that, no new offers can be submitted.
Stage four: comparing and awarding
Offers arrive with a price per quantity and a lead time. You compare them side by side rather than reading five emails.
One rule surprises people, and it is deliberate: you can still award after the deadline has passed. Nobody can bid once the request closes, but an offer that already exists remains awardable. The deadline protects the fairness of the bidding, not your ability to decide. If you need two more days to choose, take them.
Awarding an offer accepts it and rejects the others.
Stage five: the purchase order
The accepted offer becomes a purchase order, which is the document both sides work from. It carries both companies, their tax numbers, the agreed price, and the delivery address.
From there the order moves through production and delivery, and each change of state is recorded so that both the buyer and the producer see the same history. There is no separate email thread where the truth lives.
What decides whether this works for you
Two things, and neither is the software.
The first is the specification. Producers quote what they can see. Every detail you leave out is either a question that delays you or an assumption that shows up as a surprise on the invoice.
The second is the profiles on the other side. Matching is only as good as the capability data producers have entered. If you publish a request and it reaches fewer producers than you expected, the usual cause is that the right producers exist but have not listed that product type. That is worth knowing, because it is fixable: the request is fine, the reach is not, and widening the delivery scope or choosing a broader product type will often find them.
Getting started
Create a request, describe the job as precisely as you would to a printer you trust, set a realistic deadline, and publish. The receipt will tell you how far it went. If the answer is not far enough, adjust the scope rather than the wording.