How to Add Distributors and Link Them to Manufacturers

Overview

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to use the new Distributors feature in Loocey’s DLA Bidding Board. You’ll see how to add a distributor, link it to a manufacturer like Boeing, and have Loocey automatically recognize it when creating Supplier Quotes. This feature makes it easy to track which distributors supply which products and saves you time when working with RFQs.

This feature allows you to link distributors to manufacturers, then when you copy over an RFQ using our 1-click copy, system will recognize the linked distributors and automatically add them to the Supplier Quotes table with the part number and other details from MFG.

Step by step

The walkthrough covered in the video, written out so you can follow along inside Loocey.

1. This feature will help you to link other suppliers to the main manufacturers or approved sources listed on the RFQs.
2. The most common use case is that you may often buy the products from the distributors, but it is often very hard to keep track of all distributors and which products they sell.
3. Loocey will make it super easy with this new feature.
4. Let’s go to our Suppliers list and find Boeing. Right click and open a new tab for the Boeing Company supplier, we’ll need this later.
5. But for now, let’s go back to our 1st tab.
6. Because Boeing is a large manufacturer, they will not sell their parts directly to the supplier. Instead, you may have to find authorized distributors that sell Boeing parts.
7. For this example, let’s assume the distributor’s name is ABC Boeing Supply
8. Let’s add ABC Boeing Supply to our suppliers list.
9. Enter the name and cage, maybe website and phone number as needed.
10. Let’s also check the Distributor checkbox, this will help us identify the distributors.
11. Next, let’s go to the 2nd tab that we had opened earlier for The Bowing Company details.
12. Click on Supplier Distributors tab
13. Click on Add Item, this will create a new line item.
14. In the Distributor column, start typing ABC Bowing, you should see the new supplier we had created earlier, let’s select that one.
15. And for the Description field, you can leave empty, or make a comment as needed.
16. Now with this simple step, we have linked our new ABC BoEing Supply company to the Bowing Company, letting the system know that ABC Boeing Supply is able to provide some or all of the parts which are manufactured by The Bowing Company.
17. Now, let’s see how this works in action.
18. Let’s go to the DLA RFQs page, this is where we see all open solicitations.
19. let’s enter this 1560016685321 NSN in the search bar and search.
20. Next, click on the NSN link for one of the solicitations it found.
21. As you can see in the Approved Parts tab, we have a part listed that DLA wants, and the manufacturer is The Boeing Company.
22. Now, let’s see what happens when we use our 1-click copy to copy this solicitation to the Bidding Board.
23. Close the NSN dialog.
24. Select the 1st solicitation in the list, click on dots and Copy To Bidding Board menu option.
25. Once it’s done copying, let’s go to the Bidding Board, find the recently copied item and open it in detail view.
26. Now take a look at the Supplier Quotes section.
27. System recognized that The Boeing Company has a linked distributor in the system and it automatically added the line item with the details from The Bowing Company line, including the Part Number and the Quantity.
28. This alone is going to save you so much time.

Where this fits

This tutorial covers the Suppliers & RFQ Emails part of Loocey DLA. Manage manufacturers and distributors and automate your quote-request process.

• Loocey DLA Getting Started guide — account setup and the full bidding workflow
• Saved-search recipes — the exact column, condition and value for 20 common DLA searches
• DLA / DIBBS glossary — what every field on a solicitation means
• All Loocey DLA video tutorials