Jun 16, 2025·8 min
How to Build a Web App for Supplier RFQs and Quote Comparison
Learn how to design and build a web app for RFQs, supplier responses, and quote comparisons—data model, workflows, UI, security, and rollout tips.
Learn how to design and build a web app for RFQs, supplier responses, and quote comparisons—data model, workflows, UI, security, and rollout tips.
Before you design screens or pick a tech stack, lock down what the workflow must do end to end. A clear scope prevents “RFQ creep” (every team adding their own edge cases) and makes your first release immediately usable.
Start by naming the primary roles and the boundaries between them:
Your MVP workflow typically includes:
“Side-by-side” can mean very different things across organizations. Decide upfront which dimensions are first-class:
Capture hard requirements early because they shape your data model and UI:
Once these are agreed, you can design the workflow states and permissions with far fewer surprises.
A clear RFQ process is the difference between “everyone thinks it’s done” and a workflow your team can trust. Before building screens, define the states your RFQ can move through, who can move it, and what evidence must exist at each step.
Keep states simple, but explicit:
Define what must be attached or captured before the RFQ can advance:
This makes the app enforce good habits: no “sent without attachments,” no “award without an evaluation record.”
At minimum, model: Requester, Buyer, Approver, Supplier, and optionally Finance/Legal. Decide approval gates early:
Tie notifications to state changes and deadlines:
Your data model is where a supplier RFQ management app either stays flexible or becomes painful to change. Aim for a clean “RFQ → invited suppliers → quotes → evaluation → award” chain, with enough structure for quote comparison software features like pricing comparison tables, multi-currency quotes, and an audit trail.
Start with an RFQ entity for header-level fields that apply to the whole request: project/reference, due date and time zone, default currency, delivery location (ship-to), payment/incoterms, and any standard terms.
Model RFQ Line Items separately. Each line should store SKU/service description, quantity, unit of measure, and target specs. Add explicit fields for acceptable substitutes and alternates so suppliers can respond without burying details in free text.
A Supplier entity should cover contacts (multiple emails/roles), categories they serve, compliance documents (files plus expiry dates), and internal performance notes. This supports procurement automation like automatically filtering who can be invited based on category or compliance status.
A Quote should be linked to both the RFQ and supplier, with per-line responses: unit price, currency, lead time, MOQ, validity/expiration date, comments, and file attachments.
For multi-currency quotes, store the original currency and an exchange-rate snapshot used for normalization. Never overwrite supplier-entered values—store computed “normalized” totals separately.
Create an Evaluation entity for scoring, decision notes, and approvals. Pair it with an Audit Event table that records who changed what and when (status changes, edits, awards). This becomes the backbone of your approval workflow and auditability.
If you want inspiration for a minimal schema, keep it simple: RFQ, RFQLine, Supplier, SupplierContact, Quote, QuoteLine, Evaluation, AuditEvent, FileAttachment.
A good supplier experience increases response rates and reduces back-and-forth. First decide whether you actually need a self-serve portal, or if email-only intake is enough.
If you have a small supplier base, simple RFQs, and a team willing to re-key quotes, email-only can be a workable MVP. A portal becomes worth it when you need structured responses (prices, lead times, MOQ, Incoterms), frequent repeat RFQs, multiple attachments, or you want a strong audit trail of what was submitted and when.
A hybrid approach often works best: suppliers can respond in the portal, but they also receive email notifications and can download an RFQ PDF for internal review.
Keep onboarding lightweight. Procurement should be able to invite suppliers by email, set an expiry for the invitation link, and optionally pre-fill basic company details.
At minimum, onboarding should include:
Make it clear what suppliers will see: their own RFQs, their own submissions, and status updates—nothing else.
The response experience should guide suppliers through a structured form while still leaving room for nuance.
Include:
Use autosave, clear validation messages, and a “preview submission” step so suppliers can confirm before submitting.
Suppliers often need to revise quotes. Treat each submission as a version: keep history, timestamps, and who submitted it. Allow resubmission until the deadline, then lock editing while still allowing suppliers to view what they sent. If you reopen the RFQ, create a new round so comparisons stay clean and defensible.
Speed matters in RFQs, but so does consistency. The best way to get both is to treat RFQ creation as a guided workflow that reuses what you already know (templates, past events, supplier lists) while keeping every change traceable.
Build an RFQ creation wizard that starts with a template: default terms, required fields, standard line-item columns (lead time, Incoterms, warranty), and a pre-set timeline.
For repeat buys, add “copy from previous RFQ” so a buyer can clone line items, attachments, and invited suppliers—then adjust only what changed.
For larger events, support bulk line import via CSV. Keep it forgiving: show a preview, highlight invalid rows, and let users map columns (e.g., “Unit Price” vs “Price/EA”). This reduces manual entry without losing control.
Supplier selection should be quick but deliberate. Offer an approved supplier list per category, plus suggested suppliers based on historical participation, past awards, or geography.
Equally important: exclusions. Let buyers mark vendors as “do not invite” for specific reasons (conflict, performance, compliance) and require a short note. This becomes useful context later during approvals and audits.
Generate a clear “RFQ pack” that bundles attachments (drawings, spec sheets), commercial terms, and response instructions. Include an explicit Q&A policy: whether supplier questions are private, shared, and the cutoff time for clarifications.
Centralize communication inside the RFQ. Support broadcast messages to all suppliers, private Q&A threads, and addenda tracking (versioned changes to specs, dates, or quantities). Every message and addendum should be time-stamped and visible in the RFQ history for auditability.
A quote comparison view only works if you can trust that “$10” means the same thing across suppliers. The goal is to convert every response into a consistent, comparable shape—then display it in a table that makes differences obvious.
Design your core view as a grid: suppliers as columns, RFQ line items as rows, with calculated subtotals and a clear grand total per supplier.
Include a few practical columns/fields that evaluators look for immediately: unit price, extended price, lead time, validity date, and supplier notes. Keep detailed notes expandable so the table stays readable.
Normalization should happen at import time (or immediately after submission), so the UI doesn’t have to guess.
Common normalizations:
Make exceptions visible with lightweight flags:
Evaluators rarely award everything to one supplier. Let users create scenarios: split awards by line, award partial quantities, or accept alternates.
A simple pattern is a “scenario” layer on top of normalized quotes that recalculates totals as users assign quantities to suppliers. Keep scenario outputs exportable (e.g., to /blog/rfq-award-approvals) for approval workflows.
Once quotes are normalized and comparable, the app needs a clear way to turn “better” into “decided.” Evaluation should be structured enough to be consistent, but flexible enough to fit different categories and buyers.
Start with a default scorecard most teams recognize, then allow per-RFQ tweaks. Common criteria include cost, lead time, payment terms, warranty/support, and supplier risk.
Keep each criterion explicit:
Weighted scoring helps teams avoid “lowest price always wins” while still making trade-offs visible. Support simple weighting (e.g., 40% cost, 25% lead time, 15% risk, 10% warranty, 10% payment terms) and let users adjust weights per RFQ.
For formulas, prioritize transparency and editability:
Real decisions involve more than one opinion. Allow multiple evaluators to score independently, add notes, and upload supporting files (spec sheets, compliance docs, emails). Then show a consolidated view (average, median, or role-weighted) without hiding the individual inputs.
The system should produce an “award recommendation” that’s ready to share: the suggested supplier(s), key reasons, and trade-offs. Also support exception handling—e.g., awarding to a higher-priced vendor due to shorter lead time—with mandatory rationale fields and attachment requirements. This makes approvals faster and protects the team when decisions are reviewed later.
A quote comparison tool only works if people trust the decision and can prove how it was made. That means approvals that match your purchasing policy, permissions that prevent accidental (or unauthorized) changes, and an audit trail that stands up during reviews.
Start with a small set of approval rules, then expand as needed. Common patterns include approvals based on spend threshold, category, project, and exception flags.
For example:
Keep approvals readable in the UI (“why is this waiting?”), and require re-approval when material changes occur (scope, quantities, key dates, or price deltas beyond a threshold).
Define roles around real tasks:
Also consider fine-grained permissions like “view pricing,” “download attachments,” and “edit after publish.”
Log “who did what, when” for RFQ edits, supplier quote updates, approvals, and award decisions—including attachments and key field changes. Provide export options (CSV/PDF plus supporting documents) and define retention rules (e.g., keep records for 7 years; allow legal holds) to support audits.
A supplier RFQ app lives or dies by its workflow reliability: deadlines, revisions, attachments, and approvals must behave predictably. A practical backend pattern is a modular monolith (single deploy, clear modules) with a job queue and an API-first surface area—easy to evolve, simple to operate.
If you want to accelerate delivery, a vibe-coding workflow can help you prototype this end-to-end quickly. For example, teams use Koder.ai to describe the RFQ workflow in plain language, generate a working React UI and Go + PostgreSQL backend, then export the source code for in-house review and iteration.
Design around a few predictable resources and let the UI do the composition.
POST /rfqs, GET /rfqs?status=&category=&from=&to=, GET /rfqs/{id}, PATCH /rfqs/{id} (state transitions), POST /rfqs/{id}/invite-suppliersGET /suppliers, POST /suppliers, GET /suppliers/{id}POST /rfqs/{id}/quotes (supplier submit), GET /rfqs/{id}/quotes, PATCH /quotes/{id} (revise), POST /quotes/{id}/line-itemsPOST /files/presign (upload), POST /files/{id}/attach (to RFQ/quote/message)GET /rfqs/{id}/messages, POST /rfqs/{id}/messagesPOST /rfqs/{id}/approvals, POST /approvals/{id}/decision (approve/reject), GET /rfqs/{id}/auditUse a queue for reminders (“3 days left”), deadline locks (auto-close submissions), and currency-rate updates for multi-currency quotes and normalized comparisons.
Store files in object storage with signed URLs (short TTL), enforce size limits, and run virus scanning on upload. Keep metadata (hash, filename, owner, linked entity) in your database.
At minimum, support filtering by RFQ status, supplier, category, and date ranges. Start with database indexes; add a search engine later only if you outgrow it.
Security for an RFQ and quote comparison app isn’t just about preventing hacks—it’s about making sure the right people see the right data, every time, and leaving a clear record when something sensitive happens.
Start by deciding how users will sign in:
For both approaches, support MFA (authenticator app or email-based codes at minimum). If you offer passwords, set clear policies: minimum length, rate-limited attempts, and blocking common compromised passwords.
RFQ data is commercially sensitive. Your default stance should be strict isolation:
This is easiest to enforce when every API request checks both identity (who) and authorization (what they’re allowed to do), not just on the UI.
Quote entry is full of tricky edge cases. Validate and normalize at the edges:
Treat uploads as untrusted: scan files, limit size/types, and store them separately from application servers.
Audit logs are most valuable when they’re selective and readable. Track events like:
Pair logging with monitoring so suspicious patterns trigger alerts quickly—and ensure logs don’t accidentally store sensitive values like passwords or full payment details.
Integrations are where an RFQ tool stops being “another website” and starts fitting into procurement’s day-to-day work. Aim for a small set of high-value connections that reduce retyping and speed up approvals.
Start with the flows that remove manual reconciliation:
Design this as an integration layer with idempotent endpoints (safe to retry) and clear error feedback when mappings are missing.
Email remains the default workflow UI for suppliers and approvers.
Send:
If your users live in Outlook/Google Calendar, generate optional calendar holds for key dates (RFQ close, evaluation meeting).
Exports help stakeholders who don’t log in often.
Provide:
Ensure exports honor permissions and redact sensitive fields when needed.
Webhooks let other tools react in real time without custom polling. Publish events like:
quote.submittedapproval.completedaward.issuedInclude a stable event schema, timestamps, and identifiers (RFQ ID, supplier ID). Add signing secrets and retry logic so recipients can verify authenticity and handle temporary failures.
An RFQ tool succeeds or fails on adoption. A focused MVP helps you ship quickly, prove value, and avoid building advanced features before you’ve validated the workflow with real buyers and suppliers.
Must-have screens and rules that let a team run real RFQs end-to-end:
If you want to iterate fast on this MVP, consider generating the first working version in Koder.ai, then using snapshots/rollback and source-code export to review changes with stakeholders while keeping a clean path to production deployment.
Start with one category (e.g., packaging) and a handful of cooperative suppliers.
Run short cycles: 1–2 RFQs/week, then a 30-minute review with users. Capture friction points (missing fields, confusing statuses, supplier drop-offs) and fix them before expanding.
Measure impact with a small set of metrics:
Once the MVP is stable, prioritize:
For planning upgrades and packaging, add simple “next steps” pages like /pricing and a few educational guides under /blog.
Start by documenting the end-to-end workflow you must support (RFQ creation → invitations → Q&A → submissions → comparison → evaluation → award → close). Then define:
This prevents “RFQ creep” and keeps your first release usable.
Model the minimum set of roles around real tasks:
Enforce permissions in the , not just the UI, so access rules can’t be bypassed.
Keep states simple but explicit, and define who can transition them:
Add “required artifacts” per stage (e.g., RFQ pack before sending; evaluation record before award).
Treat communication as first-class and auditable:
This reduces back-and-forth while keeping a defensible history.
A practical minimal schema is:
RFQ, Normalize early (on submission/import), not only at display time:
In the comparison view, show both and an per supplier.
Use a portal when you need structured, comparable data and a reliable audit trail:
Email-only can work for a very small supplier base, but it usually forces manual re-keying and weakens traceability. A hybrid approach (portal submission + email notifications/downloadable RFQ pack) is often best.
Treat each supplier submission as a versioned quote:
If you reopen the event, create a new round rather than overwriting prior submissions to keep comparisons clean.
Keep scoring transparent and tied to evidence:
The output should be an “award recommendation” that includes rationale and flags exceptions (e.g., higher price due to lead time).
Make policy enforcement explicit and auditable:
For integrations, prioritize:
RFQLineSupplier, SupplierContactQuote, QuoteLineEvaluationAuditEventFileAttachmentKey design choices:
quote.submitted, award.issued)If you need scenario outputs for approvals, keep exports linkable (for example, to /blog/rfq-award-approvals).