How You Respond to Lines Using a Spreadsheet

Your business can have tasks for direct material spaces and these tasks may contain negotiations with large number of lines of typically manufacturing parts, components, or construction equipment if you're in construction industry.

These lines typically have a fixed set of line details like cost factors and attributes that can apply to all lines to drive compliance and standards.

You can respond to a large number of negotiation lines items using tailored spreadsheets. Based on your requirements, you can create responses by a spreadsheet using either of these options or both.

You can export the Requirements and Lines spreadsheet to gather all response information like the negotiation overview, requirements, and lines, and line details such as line attributes, cost factors, and price tiers represented in a hierarchy under each line and import your response information in the spreadsheet back into the application. For lines with different set of line details and negotiation or both have requirements, then use the Requirements and Lines spreadsheet. For more information, see Responding to a Negotiation by Spreadsheet.

Alternatively, you can export the Lines only spreadsheet to respond to the lines in the CSV format for a large volume of lines and import your response information in the spreadsheet back into the application. For direct materials when you have large volume of lines with fixed set of the line details (attributes, cost factors, and so on), then use the Lines only spreadsheet.

If you as a supplier can't access the Lines only spreadsheet then contact the category manager.

When you're responding to a negotiation and you export the lines only spreadsheet to create a response, a spreadsheet in .csv format with content maintained in linear non-hierarchical lines is available. You can use this spreadsheet to respond to large number of lines with details where you can use Excel functions to drag and copy response values for lines and their details or use filters to search lines and its details.

In the spreadsheet, the lines are exported with details in a linear format including cost factors, price tiers, price breaks, or attributes and you can only change response values. All response values entered are validated during import, and errors are displayed to assist you to fix them and upload again.

To add more price tiers or breaks, insert the same set of columns next to the original set for each new record to be added. For example, add additional Price Tiers by copying and inserting the columns: Price Tier Minimum Quantity, Price Tier Maximum Quantity, Price Tier Target Value, and Price Tier Response Price.

When importing, consider these two ways entries are done in the spreadsheet:

• For basic line header columns (line, item, and so on), you need not maintain the same order.

• For line children entries (attributes, cost factors, and so on), maintain the same order across children entries and same the sequence within each child entry.

Only these date value formats are supported and using any other date value format will throw validation errors.

• Date format: yyyy-mm-dd

• Date-time format: yyyy-mm-dd-hh:mm:ss

Only these currency and number value formats are supported and using any other currency value format will throw validation errors:

Numeric value example: 1,234.567 Or 1234.567

This table contains attributes and the related descriptions you can use to update the spreadsheet before import.

Attribute	Editable	Description
Line	No	The number of the line in the negotiation.
Item	No	Item identifier
Revision	No	The latest revision number of the item.
Start Price	No	The item price at which responses to the negotiation should begin.
UOM	No	Enter the unit of measure in which you want to negotiate for the line if it's different from the UOM associated to that line type. See the AddLinesUOM.txt file in the .zip for available UOM values.
Estimated Quantity	No	The expected number of units to be purchased over the life of the agreement.
Estimated Total Amount	No	The estimated amount of business (in the negotiation currency) that you expect to pay for this line.
Negotiation Quantity	No	The number of units buyer wants to purchase.
Best Response Price	No	The best response price for the line from among the active responses.
Line Price	Conditionally (Required if editable)	The response price offered by the supplier for one unit of the item or service.
Response Price	Conditionally (Required if editable)	The actual price per unit.
Supplier Item	No	The unique part number assigned to the item by the supplier.
Manufacturer	No	The manufacturer who has manufactured this item.
Manufacturer Part Number	No	The unique part number assigned to the item by the manufacturer.
Target Minimum Release Amount	No	Minimum amount the category manager wants to release against this blanket agreement line.
Response Minimum Release Amount	Yes (Optional)	The minimum release amount you offer for this agreement line.
Proxy Minimum	Conditionally (Optional if editable)	Enter the minimum price that you're willing to proxy bid for this line.
Response Quantity	Conditionally (Required if editable)	The number of units of the item that you plan to buy. Required for all lines that you want to bid on. If this negotiation allows only full quantities, this field displays the Quantity value and is protected against update. If you're bidding only on selected lines, you can leave all the bid-related columns blank for lines with no bids. This applies only to RFQs that allow you to quote on selected lines. If the line doesn't allow partial quantity bids, this field displays the Response Quantity value and is protected against update.
Promised Delivery Date	Conditionally (Optional if editable)	The date by which you can promise to deliver the item or service to the category manager's location.
Promised Ship Date	Conditionally (Optional if editable)	The date the supplier delivers the item or service (purchase order only).
Note to Buyer	Yes (Optional)	Any additional information for the buyer about this negotiation line.
Requested Delivery Date	No	The date by which the item or service the category manager wants to purchase is needed at the location.
Requested Ship Date	No	For buyer managed transportation, the date the supplier is expected to have the goods ready for pickup from their site.
Target Price	No	Target bid price for one unit of the item or service to be purchased.
Category Name	No	Name of the broad family or category to which this line belongs.
Location	No	Supplier Site Assignment record of the supplier site in the Requisitioning BU.
Close Date	No	The negotiation close date.
Cost Factor	No	The name of the cost factor defined by the category manager.
Pricing Basis	No	The method for calculating his particular cost factor. Use a fixed amount, a per-unit amount, or a percentage of line price amount.
Cost Factor Target Value	No	The amount the category manager expects for this cost factor.
Cost Factor Response Value	Yes (Required)	Your response to the cost factor.
Cost Factor Response Price	No	Your response value converted to a per-unit price.
Price Break Type	No	Select Cumulative to apply the price break to the cumulative quantity on all released shipments for the item as part of the blanket purchase agreement. Select Noncumulative to apply the price break to quantity purchased on a single release against the blanket purchase agreement.
Price Break Location	Conditionally (editable if for at least one line, supplier can modify price breaks. If editable, this column is optional)	Ship-to location where the price break will be applied.
Price Break Quantity	Conditionally (Required if for at least one line, supplier can modify price breaks else display-only)	Specify the quantity for which this price break is requested.
Price Break Target Value	No	Specify a price that the buying organization wants to pay for one unit of the item.
Price Break Start Date	Conditionally (Required if for at least one line, supplier can modify price breaks AND for noncumulative PB else display-only)	Specify the start date for delivering the items for which this price break is requested.
Price Break End Date	Conditionally (Required if for at least one line, supplier can modify price breaks AND for noncumulative PB else display-only)	Specify the end date for delivering the items for which this price break is requested.
Price Break Pricing Basis	Conditionally (Required if for at least one line, supplier can modify price breaks else display-only)	The background for the price break.
Price Break Response Value	Yes (Required)	The response value got for the price break.
Price Tier Minimum Quantity	Yes (Required)	Specify the minimum quantity the buying organization requires for this quantity-based price tier.
Price Tier Maximum Quantity	Yes (Required)	Specify the maximum quantity the buying organization requires for this quantity-based price tier.
Price Tier Target Value	No	Specify a price that the buying organization wants to pay for one unit of the item for this quantity-based price tier.
Price Tier Response Price	Yes (Required)	Specify a price that the buying organization wants to pay for one unit of the item for this quantity-based price tier.
Attribute	No	Enter the name of the line attribute you want to define (Example: PPM rate, grade). The Attribute column and the five of these columns comprise the group of columns used to define a single attribute for this line. Insert and complete a new group of the six columns for each additional attribute associated with this line.
Attribute Group	No	Used to categorize attributes. If a value for Attribute Group isn't defined, the default Attribute Group value is used. See the AddLineAttributeGroups.txt spreadsheet included in the .zip for the group values available to this negotiation.
Attribute Target	No	The target value for the attribute. Your entry must match the Attribute Value Type you specify.
Attribute Response	Conditionally	Enter Required, Optional or Display only to indicate how you want the suppliers to respond, and whether or not entering a response value is required or optional. If this is a multiattribute scoring negotiation and you want to score the attribute, then it must be Required.
Weighted Score	No	This field is calculated by the application when you enter a value in the Response Value field. This field only appears if the category manager defined scoring criteria and made the information visible by suppliers.
Internal Line ID	No	Unique identifier for each response line.
End of Line Delimiter	Yes	This is the last column of your spreadsheet.