The portal your customer gave you, and what it will and will not show — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This presentation is for a supplier who has been given a login to a customer’s purchasing system and is not sure what they are looking at. In about nine minutes you will know what that login is, why the screens are read-only, which one behaves differently from the rest, and what to do first when a screen comes up empty.

Step 1 — Understand what your login actually is

After this step you will know whose system you are in. This is not an account on a shared marketplace and it is not our software talking to yours. You are signed in to your customer’s own system, on a login that has been tied to the supplier record they keep for you. Every screen you open is filtered by that tie. You see the orders, receipts, invoices, returns and credit notes that carry your supplier record and nothing else — not another supplier’s, not the rest of your customer’s purchasing. If the tie is ever removed or set inactive, the screens do not warn you; they simply come back empty.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Before you can use it

Step 2 — Expect to read, not to write

After this step you will stop looking for buttons that are not there. These portals have no create screen, no save and no delete anywhere in them. That is deliberate. The documents belong to your customer’s books, and a supplier changing a figure in someone else’s ledger would be worse than useless. What you get instead is a faithful view of what they have committed to. Most of the screens go further and show only documents your customer has finalised, so a receipt or an invoice appears the moment it becomes real for them and not before. Nothing you can see is still being drafted.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Step 3 — Know the one screen that breaks that rule

After this step you will treat one portal with more care than the others. The purchase return screen has no finalised-only filter on it. It lists returns by record status alone, which means you can see a return your customer is still drafting, and one they have discarded. This is useful and it is a trap. A draft return can change its quantities, change its reasons or be thrown away entirely, and if you ship a replacement or raise a credit against one you have moved before your customer did. Always read the posting status on the return itself before you act on it.

Reference: Purchase Return Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Step 4 — Work an empty screen in the right order

After this step an empty listing will stop being a mystery. Check three things, in this order. First, is anything finalised — a document your customer is still drafting is invisible to you on every screen but returns. Second, are you searching for a status the screen cannot return: the advanced search is combined with the finalised-only rule, so asking for drafts or voided documents gives you nothing every time, and that is not a fault. Third, is your login still tied to the supplier record. Only the third one needs your customer’s administrator, and it is the least likely of the three.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Troubleshooting

Step 5 — Know which documents you can take away

After this step you will stop fighting an export that cannot work. The portals are not consistent here, and the reason is worth knowing. The purchase order screen exports its own PDF on your login alone, and works. The goods received note screen builds its export and its attachment download against your customer’s back-office endpoints, which need a document permission your supplier login does not normally carry, so you get a not-authorised message. Nothing you can change fixes that one. Ask your customer to send the file, or have them grant the read permission if they want you self-serving.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Troubleshooting

Step 6 — Know what the portal will never do for you

After this step you will use the right channel for a disagreement. There is no message box, no dispute button, no acknowledgement and no way to accept or reject anything. Your customer does not learn that you looked, and nothing you do here reaches them. The portal answers questions; it does not carry a conversation. So when a quantity is wrong or an invoice is missing, take the document number and the date off the screen and raise it the way you always have — by e-mail, or with whoever placed the order. The value of the portal is that you now have their number for it, not just yours.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: What your customer ordered, and how much of it is still to come · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation