The Agent Manual

Welcome to Sourcing Management

What Sourcing Management does for your agency, what is ready on your first day, and how this manual is organised.

Sign in to your new site

Open the welcome email, choose your password and sign in to your own site for the first time.

Your day-one checklist

The Day One page guides you through your brand, company and bank details; this list covers the rest of your first 30 minutes.

Add your logo and colours

Put your brand name, logo and colours on the sign-in page, the client portal, your website and your emails.

Add your company details

Give your company its phone, email, website and address, so your documents print complete.

Add your bank details

Your bank, account name and account number or IBAN, so your invoices tell the client how to pay you.

Set how you earn

Turn on your business models (commission, trading, factory rebates) and set your default rates and currency.

Add your team

Give each colleague their own login: an email address and a role profile, Sourcing Manager or Sourcing Agent.

Import your factories, clients and products

Bring your factories, clients and products in from Excel or CSV instead of typing them one by one.

Remove the sample data

Delete the practice factories, clients, products and requests in one click when you are ready to work for real.

Change your language

Switch your own screens between English and Chinese; each user chooses for themselves.

How a deal moves

The steps of a sourcing deal, from the client's request to your earnings, and where each one happens.

Record a client's request

Create a Sourcing Request for what a client wants: the product, how many pieces, and where and when it must arrive.

Ask factories for prices

Make a request for quotation from the client's request, pick the factories and send them the PDF.

Enter each factory's quote

Record what each factory quotes: price, lead time, MOQ, carton packing and sample cost.

Compare the quotes and award one

See the factory quotes side by side and award the one the client's price is built on.

Work out the client's price

Add freight, insurance, inspection, duty and other costs to the factory price, and see the client's price and your earnings.

Send the client a quotation

Make the client's quotation from the costing sheet; the client approves or rejects it in the client portal.

Turn the approved quotation into an order

Make the client order from the approved quotation and send the client the proforma invoice.

Order from the factory

Make the factory order from the client order, follow its milestones and send the factory the bilingual PDF.

Follow your earnings

See what each order earns you, and follow each amount from expected to invoiced to received.

Invite a client to the portal

Send a client's buyer an invitation; they choose a password and land on their own portal.

What your clients see

The portal's dashboard, catalogue, requests, quotations and orders, and what never appears on it.

Requests your clients send

Clients send requests from the catalogue or the New request page; they arrive in your Requests list.

Clients approve quotations

The buyer approves or rejects your quotation in the portal; you are notified and the decision is saved.

Clients follow their orders

The eight-stage tracker on the portal and what moves each order from one stage to the next.

Messages with clients

One message thread per request and per order, with files, on the portal and in your forms.

Calls clients book

Clients book a 15, 30 or 60 minute call in your office hours; it lands in your calendar.

How languages work

Who sees which language, and where it is chosen.

Print in another language

Set a factory's or client's print language; new documents follow it, and the print view can override it.

Your free trial

14 days with every feature and no card; what happens when the trial ends and how to keep your site.

Choose a plan and pay

Pay for your plan monthly or yearly with a card, through Airwallex, our payment provider.

Change your plan

Move to a bigger or smaller plan, or from monthly to yearly billing, on the billing page.

Invoices and your card

See and download your invoices, and change the card your plan is paid with.

When a payment fails, and a paused site

What happens when a payment does not go through, when a site is paused, and how to open it again.

My account

Your plan, usage, team, invoices, data export, brand and closing your account, on one page in your site.

Export, cancel or close your account

Take a copy of all your data, stop paying at the end of the period, or close the account for good.

Your site and your account

Your own site and database, signing in, the free trial, backups and who owns your data.

Your first days

The day-one checklist, sample data, your brand, company details, your team and importing your own data.

Requests, quotes and orders

Where a deal starts, factory quotes, the ways you earn, what the client never sees and where your earnings are.

The client portal

Inviting buyers, what clients see, expired links, decisions, languages and ending a buyer's access.

Printing and documents

Which documents you can print, printing in English or Chinese, bank details, company details and PDF.

Languages and your data

Working in English or Chinese, what is translated and what is not, and getting your data out.

Sign-in and account problems

What to do when you cannot sign in, a link does not work, roles are missing or a colleague leaves.

Setup and data problems

What to do with a missing logo, missing company details, wrong roles, rejected import rows and sample data.

Deal and order problems

What to do with factory quotes, the client's approval, submitted documents and earnings that look wrong.

Client portal problems

What to do when an invitation does not arrive, a buyer sees an empty portal or a quotation cannot be approved.

Printing problems

What to do with missing logo, bank details or company details, the wrong language and layout trouble.

Language problems

What to do when the page stays English, a colleague or buyer sees another language, or text is not translated.

The documents and their statuses

Every document a deal moves through, and what each status means.

The fields

The fields you meet on the sourcing documents, in plain words.

Roles, plans and limits

Who can do what, what a buyer can do, and the limits of each plan.