For suppliers
The supplier's walkthrough
Signing in, submitting online or by workbook, answering a detail-form request, and what a broker sees.
9 min read
This is the whole of the supplier side. You are invited to a campaign, you submit your items online or in a workbook, you can change them until the deadline, and the buyer's decisions come back to you in one email and on your dashboard. Nothing else is required of you.
Getting in
You receive an invitation
It names the campaign, the deadline, and the brands you are acting for. If this is your first campaign, a second email carries your sign-in details.
Sign in
Your email address is your username. Set a password of at least 8 characters. If your organization uses single sign-on, you will be sent to your own identity provider instead.
Set your timezone and date format
Your nameSettings. Every deadline and timestamp you see anywhere, including in emails, is rendered in these. It is 30 seconds and it removes a whole class of misunderstanding.
Your dashboard
RailHome is what needs you and what is closing soon. RailCampaigns is every campaign you have been invited to.
Opening a campaign shows its description, its briefing materials if the buyer attached any, its deadline, and Your items: everything you have submitted, with a status each.
A status is two parts: the outcome, one of five words, and underneath it whose move it is. Your buyer sees the same words on their screens, so a status is something you can both quote in an email and mean the same thing by.
| Status | Whose move | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | with you | It is in. Change it as often as you like until the deadline. |
| Pending | with the buyer | The campaign closed. Nothing for you to do; the buyer is deciding. |
| Accepted | settled | Approved. A detail form may be requested against it later. |
| Rejected | settled | Declined. The buyer's note, if they wrote one, is on the item. |
| Accepted, detail form due | detail form due with you | Upload the detail form against this item. |
| Accepted, detail form in | detail form in | Your detail form arrived. Nothing outstanding. |
| Withdrawn | settled | You pulled it. It stays on the record, struck through. |
Submitting
Two ways, validated identically. Pick whichever suits the job.
Online, in the grid
- Open the campaign and press Submit items.
- Pick the brand, if you act for more than one.
- Choose Enter items online.
- Fill in one row per item. Add 4 rows gives you more.
- Press Submit once. Everything stays editable until the deadline.
The Excel workbook, for many items
- Choose Upload the Excel template.
- Download the template. It is generated from the buyer's current form, so it always matches what they are asking for.
- Fill it in offline. One row per item; the dropdowns are built into the sheet.
- Upload it. Each row becomes an item with its own reference ID.
Your grid saves itself
You do not need to finish the grid in one sitting. About a second and a half after your last edit, the rows save as a draft and Draft saved, with the time, appears above the grid. While you type it reads Unsaved changes, then Saving draft; Draft not saved means the save failed, so stay on the page and edit a cell to try again.
- Close the tab and come back later: the submit page reloads your draft rows.
- A draft is not a submission. The buyer sees Draft beside your name and no lines until you press Submit, and your home screen shows Draft with a Continue button.
- Submitting removes the draft. Nothing is filed twice.
If the upload is refused
You get a message per row and per field, naming the column. The usual causes, in order of how often they happen:
- A dropdown value that is close but not on the list. Case does not matter; spelling does.
- A blank in a required column, the ones marked with an asterisk.
- A date outside the window the buyer allowed. The window is written in the help row.
- Text in a number column.
Reordering, hiding or inserting columns is fine: the file carries a hidden sheet that maps columns to fields. Rebuilding the workbook from scratch is also fine, as long as your headers match the labels.
You keep a copy. Download my lines, above the items table on the campaign page, is an Excel workbook of every line you have in that campaign, with its reference, its status and every field of the form. A broker gets one sheet per brand.
Every submission is also confirmed by email, shortly after you press Submit. It names the campaign, the brand the lines were filed under, how many lines and when, and it links back to the campaign page. The workbook is not attached: your prices stay behind your sign-in, and Download my lines is one click from that link. The confirmation goes to the person who submitted, not to everyone who holds the brand, and it arrives straight away even if you have asked for a daily summary.
The item screen
Open any item from your campaign to get:
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Edit item | Every field, editable while you have the right to edit. Saving after the campaign closed, under a grant, returns the item to the buyer flagged as revised. |
| Supporting files | Optional attachments against the file fields the buyer defined. The buyer sees them while reviewing. Attach, replace, or remove. |
| Withdraw this item | Pulls it. It stays on the record struck through, so the buyer can see it existed. |
| Conversation | Questions and notes about this line, both ways. Write here rather than replying to an email, and the answer stays with the line for whoever picks the campaign up next. |
| History | Every change to this item, with who made it and when. Yours and the buyer's. |
Answering the buyer
| What arrived | What to do |
|---|---|
| Edit access granted | The buyer let you back into a closed campaign, for one item or for your whole submission. Read their note, edit the values, save. The item returns to their review flagged as revised. |
| A question on a line | The buyer wrote in the item's conversation. Answer in the same place, so the answer stays with the line. |
| Detail form requested | Open the item, download the template if the buyer attached one, follow their instructions, and upload the completed file against the item. |
Staying informed
If you take part in many campaigns, one email per event is a lot of email. In Your nameSettingsEmail you can ask for one summary a day instead, at an hour you pick. Invitations, deadline reminders and requests for detail still arrive straight away, so choosing a summary cannot cost you a deadline.
The same screen offers a calendar feed: a URL your calendar subscribes to, carrying the deadlines of every campaign you take part in and nothing else. Move a deadline and it moves in your calendar. See Notifications, email and your calendar.
If you act for several brands
A broker holding several supplier tags sees all of them on one dashboard, and chooses a brand each time they submit.
- Every item is filed under one brand. Submit for each brand separately.
- The Excel template is per brand, so download one per tag. Uploading a brand's workbook files its rows under that brand.
- Reference IDs carry the brand's code, not yours.
- Decision emails come to you consolidated: one email covering every brand you act for.
Narrowing the screen for a client call
About to share your screen with one client? Use the brand filter in the header to narrow every supplier screen to that brand. The other brands disappear from view for as long as you leave it set, and the brand picker collapses behind a Change button so their names are not on screen either. An amber banner reading Filtered to <brand> stays at the top of every supplier screen while the filter is on, so you can see at a glance what your client is seeing. Press Show all tags to clear it.
Notifications follow the filter too, along with the unread count in the top bar. Notices that are about you rather than a brand keep showing: campaign announcements, milestone reminders and password events. If you open an item belonging to another brand you represent, you keep the item and the filter moves to that brand, with the banner highlighting to tell you.
After the campaign closes
At the deadline the campaign closes itself and your items lock. You can still read everything; you just cannot change it.
Need a change anyway?
Press Request edit access on the item or the campaign. The buyer sees the request on their campaign and approves or declines it.
If they approve
You get access to that one item, or to your whole submission for that campaign, depending on what they granted. Saving a change returns the item to their review queue flagged as revised, so nothing slips past them.
Decisions arrive
One email per campaign listing your outcomes, with the buyer's notes. The same information is on your dashboard and in your notifications, so you never need to keep the email.
Stuck on something specific? Troubleshooting covers the common ones. For the whole picture of who can see what, read Suppliers, tags and access.