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Getting Started With Loocey DLA

This guide walks you through setting up your Loocey account and then through the complete bidding workflow — from finding DLA solicitations, to requesting quotes from suppliers, to calculating your bid price and placing bids in DIBBS.

Account Setup

Invite Users

You can invite users to your organization and assign specific roles and permissions.

Steps:

  1. Go to Profile Menu > Admin Panel > Users.
  2. Use the Invite button and follow the instructions to invite users.
  3. Use the Roles & Permissions tab to customize the permissions.

Company Profile

Go to Admin Panel > Company Profile to update the company details, including your UEI and CAGE code, which are used in other parts of the application.

API Keys

You can use Loocey API keys to create automations or integrations with other applications or internal systems. To get started go to Admin Panel > API Keys.

Steps:

  1. Go to Profile Menu > Admin Panel > API Keys.
  2. Create a new API key and give it a name.
  3. Use the API Reference documentation link shown on the API Keys page to learn more about the APIs or to forward to your developers.

Services

Creating services allows you to track costs and fees associated with services, such as packaging or shipping. You first need to create the services so they are available in the drop down when you are on the Service Details tab.

Steps:

  1. Go to BID > Services.
  2. Enter a new service in the Add Item input, and hit enter or save.
  3. We recommend you create at least these services:
    • Packaging
    • Shipping
    • Labor
  4. Once added, go to the Bidding Board and open an RFQ in detail view (right click > open in new tab, or mouse over the RFQ name and click the Open Item icon to go to the Detail page).
  5. Click on the Service Details tab.
  6. Click on Add Item.
  7. The newly created services are now in the Service drop down — select one.
  8. Enter description, quantity and rate, and the system calculates the total and adds it to your Cost stats at the top.
Note: if you leave out the “Margin %”, this service cost is taken out of your profit — in the Stats your Profit $ goes down and the Bid Unit Price does not change. If you enter a margin for a given service, the system increases the profit but also increases the Bid Unit Price.

Loocey Bidding Workflow

In this section we go over the most optimal process used to filter and find solicitations, copy them to the Bidding Board, go through the quote request and pricing process, and finally place the bids in DIBBS.

Step 1 – Creating Saved Filters / Searches

It is important to learn how to create saved searches and filters to find exactly the type of DLA solicitations that meet your needs or specific criteria.

Steps:

  1. Go to the DLA app from the left app bar.
  2. DLA RFQs is the default table.
  3. When first getting started, you should see 2 tabs, “All RFQs” and “Simple RFQs”.
    • These are system views and cannot be changed.
  4. All RFQs does not have any filters — you can start here to add your filters.
  5. Simple RFQs is great for beginner companies as it has pre-selected filters that you can use to get started.
  6. Note: All RFQs sometimes shows some empty cells. This is because Loocey pulls in data even before it is shown on DIBBS, usually 1 day before, and the data is populated throughout the day.
  7. Either on All RFQs or Simple RFQs, click on Filter to open the filter dialog.
  8. Click on Add Filter to add a new filter row.
  9. Select the column to filter by, the condition, and a specified value.
  10. Example:
    • Select FSC Code as the column.
    • Select “In” as the condition — this allows you to enter one or more FSC codes, one per line.
    • Enter your list of FSC codes in the value input.
    • Hit Apply.
  11. The system now filters the solicitations based on the conditions in your filters.
  12. To save this search, click on Save > Save As New.
  13. Give it a new name and save.
  14. This creates a new tab alongside All RFQs and Simple RFQs with the filters you used.
  15. Once you create your saved tab / saved filter it stays there, and you can always edit the filters again and hit Save > Save View to save the changes.
  16. Saved filters remain in the system and you can go back to them every time you use Loocey.
Hack: go to our YouTube search for “find” . This filters down quick video tutorials and shows you different examples of how filtering works.

Filtering and saved views are global functionality in Loocey, which means you use the same approach on other pages and tables, including on the main Bidding Board, to create the different saved tabs and views you would like to see. Once you master filtering in Loocey, you can use your skills on every other table.

Step 2 – Copy To Bidding Board

This is one of the most important features of Loocey. This step removes the manual data entry, automatically creates a private database of your solicitations / RFQs to manage, and creates visibility and a team environment to scale your operations.

Steps:

  1. Once you have created your filters and are ready to work on one or more RFQs, go to DLA > DLA RFQs.
  2. Go to the desired saved filter to see the available RFQs.
  3. Select one or more RFQs by using the checkbox.
  4. You will see the Action Menu. Get familiar with this menu — you will see different options on it depending on which page you are on in Loocey.
  5. From the Action Menu, click on Copy To Board.
  6. A confirmation popup comes up — simply hit Copy.
  7. If you selected multiple RFQs, the first one is copied immediately and the rest go into the Job Queue and are processed within a few seconds. You can access the Job Queue from the top menu, the Q icon button.
  8. Go back to BID > Bidding Board.
  9. You will now see the newly copied RFQs.
  10. The copy process does multiple things. It copies the RFQ details into the Bidding Board, and it also copies the Approved Sources / MFGs from the solicitations directly into BID > Suppliers, among other things. Then it links all the records together to create a seamless experience as you go through the workflow.

Step 3 – Suppliers

Do not work on the RFQs yet. It is best to first check out the BID > Suppliers table and update it as needed — this helps a lot with the next process.

On the Suppliers table you have the Main Table view by default, which shows all suppliers that were either copied by the Copy To Board feature or that you added manually.

While most have an email set when we copy over an RFQ, some suppliers might not have a sales email. It is best to update the suppliers with missing emails before you start the RFQ email process.

Update supplier emails / info — steps:

  1. Go to BID > Suppliers.
  2. Click on Save > Save As New.
  3. Name it “Empty Emails” (or your preferred name) and save.
  4. The goal is to quickly identify new suppliers with missing emails, and since you are now an expert at creating saved filters, we will create a view for it.
  5. Once the new tab is created, click on Filter.
  6. In the filter dialog, click on Add Filter to add a row.
  7. Select Email as the column.
  8. Select “Is Null” as the condition — this just means empty.
  9. Hit Apply.
  10. Click on Save > Save View to save the changes.
  11. The table now shows the suppliers with no email address, which you can go through and update directly in the table.
  12. To see this process in a video, watch How to Update Supplier Email in Loocey .

Update Supplier Quoting

The default value for this column is Yes, meaning the MFG / supplier is actually providing quotes when requested. However, as you start sending your RFQ emails or contacting them, you will come across suppliers which are either too large or simply never give you a good price, and/or they are bidding directly and you want to avoid more competition.

In that case you should update the Quoting column and select No, No Skip, or one of the other options.

This helps when it comes time to send RFQ emails, as by default the system does not send emails to suppliers you have marked as No in the Quoting column.

This video will be helpful: How to Manage Suppliers – DLA/DIBBS .

Adding Distributors or Your Own Suppliers to Loocey

If you already have suppliers you often work with, or when a manufacturer gives you a distributor to work with, it is best to add them to Loocey and go through the linking process to link the specific distributor to the manufacturer.

The advantage of linking is that the system now has the context of which distributors you like to work with. When you use the Copy feature to copy RFQs to the Bidding Board, and you have linked distributors to any of the manufacturers / approved sources listed for that RFQ, the system automatically places those suppliers in the list for you to use in your RFQ pricing process. This saves a lot of time and avoids manually adding your distributors to the RFQ.

Steps:

  1. Go to BID > Suppliers.
  2. Create a new supplier by using the Add Item link below the table.
  3. Once created, search and find the manufacturer that you want to link your new supplier to.
  4. Open the MFG / approved source in detail view by clicking the Open Item icon (you will see it when you mouse over the name).
  5. Under the Supplier Distributors tab, click on Add Item to add a row.
  6. Once the row is added, in the Distributor column click to open the drop down, then type to find the newly created supplier and select it.
  7. You can leave the other columns empty, or enter a description if desired.
  8. That’s it — we have now linked our new supplier to that manufacturer.
  9. This means that for any future RFQs that we copy to the Bidding Board, the newly linked supplier is also in the list for you to request pricing from.
  10. Watch this video that shows the process: How to Add Distributors and Link Them to Manufacturers .

Step 4 – Email RFQ Process

Now that we have updated our suppliers and copied the RFQs we want to work on, we can start our email RFQ process to request pricing from the suppliers.

Steps:

  1. Go to BID > Bidding Board.
  2. You should already see the RFQs that you copied earlier.
  3. By default we only have the “All Bids” view on this table — let’s create another one.
  4. Click on Save > Save As New, name it “New”, and click save.
  5. This creates the New tab / saved view.
  6. Then on the New tab, click on Filter to open the filter dialog.
  7. Click on Add Filter to add a filter row.
  8. Select Bid Status as the column and “Is Null” as the condition, so we can filter and only see the new items without any bid status yet, then hit Apply.
  9. Click on Save > Save View to save the view changes.
  10. You should now only see RFQs with an empty Bid Status.
  11. Select one or more, up to 20 max, by using the checkbox.
  12. In the Action Menu, click on Bulk Email to open our bulk email sender.
  13. The Bulk Email Sender popup comes up.
  14. On the left, in the Email To List column, you should see all the suppliers associated with the selected RFQs.
  15. You will also see Selected Only and Show All options above the list. If you click Show All, this also shows any other supplier that either does not have an email or that we marked as Quoting No / Skip — which means the system does not email suppliers with no email or suppliers we want to skip.
  16. You can click to check or uncheck a specific supplier if you would like to override the default selection.
  17. In the middle section, first look at the From drop down. If you have not connected your email to Loocey, you first need to go through the email connection workflow.
  18. Alternatively, you can copy / paste and send the emails manually using your email software.
    • This still saves a lot of time, as the emails use email templates and are dynamically populated for a given RFQ with MFG part number, quantity, and more.
  19. Email templates:
    • The system comes with a built-in email template engine.
    • Duplicate the Default Email Template from the templates menu and edit / customize as needed.
  20. Email signature:
    • Go to Profile > Email Signature to set your email signature.
    • Once set, all outgoing emails use your email signature.
  21. Click on Send once ready.
    • This shows another popup confirming how many emails are going out and the new status that is set for those RFQs.
    • By default we set them to the Quote Requests Sent status.
  22. Emails go into the Job Queue (the Q icon button in the top nav bar) and may take a few minutes to send, depending on how many were selected.

Step 5 – Bid Calculations / Update Pricing

Once the RFQ emails are done — or even if you have a different mechanism for getting pricing — this step is needed to accurately calculate the potential Bid Unit Price while keeping an eye on your costs and profits.

Steps:

  1. Go to BID > Bidding Board.
  2. Open the RFQ that needs the updates. You can mouse over the name and click the Open Item icon, or right click > open in new tab, to see the RFQ Detail page.
  3. On the Detail page you have a few sections:
    • The top shows the RFQ number and status, an Edit Mode toggle for when you need to edit something, and an Update Bid button on the right side.
    • Followed by the Stats section — a very important section showing all the key numbers, including Bid Unit Price, Quantity, Cost Total, Markup / Margin % and Profit.
    • Followed by the details of the RFQ.
    • Then the main tabs: Supplier Quotes, Related RFQs, Files, Product Details, Service Details and Notes.
  4. Supplier Quotes tab:
    • This is where you see all related Approved Source companies with related part numbers.
    • If you linked any distributors to MFGs, they also show up here as part of the Copy To Board process.
    • Each supplier also has their own status that you can set as needed.
    • There are also other important columns, such as the Unit Price the supplier quoted, Quoting status, Quote File and other details.
    • You can upload the quote file directly into Loocey and have one-click access to the quoted file when needed.
    • Go through and update all the lines as you get your quotes back after RFQ emails or other means of getting pricing.
    • Once the decision is made as to which supplier you want to use for this bid, simply click the checkbox next to it to select it.
    • On the Action Menu, click on Use For Bid.
    • This brings up our Pricing Module with the details already filled out for the given supplier.
    • Make adjustments as needed and click Update on the Pricing Module.
    • The system now starts showing the Bid Unit Price based on the margins and other details set in the pricing tool.
  5. Files tab:
    • This is the main files tab — you can upload the final versions of documents, quotes and so on here.
    • You can even use it to store links to other files if the files are kept in another drive outside of Loocey. The link still gives you quick access to the file.
  6. Product Details:
    • Once we hit Update on the Pricing Module, the rows in Product Details are also updated with all the details.
    • This is important, as this is the selected supplier / product and pricing that is used for this bid.
    • You can also manually update this table as needed, including changing the Margin % or other details, and the changes are reflected in the Stats at the top.
  7. Service Details:
    • We added our core services as part of the Account Setup.
    • You can now add rows to the Service Details tab and select the desired service and rate / quantity to keep track of the costs associated with services.
    • As mentioned earlier, if a Margin % is given to service rows then the profit increases and the Bid Unit Price increases as well. Otherwise the Bid Unit Price stays the same and the service-associated costs come out of the profit, as our Cost Total increases.
  8. Notes:
    • As the name implies, it is always good practice to come to this tab and write a quick note about what is happening with this RFQ.
    • Loocey is a team system, so it shows the name of the person writing the note along with the date and time.
  9. All done — finally, when all the calculations are done and the numbers show up correctly in the Stats section, change the status to Ready To Bid from the status drop down above.
  10. Watch this video:
  11. Once done, simply move on to the next item.
  12. The goal with the Detail page is to have all the information necessary to place your bids in DIBBS.

Step 6 – Learn More With Videos

Ideally, watch more videos to learn about the different features in Loocey.