SupplierVault is one shared place for everything about your suppliers: who they are, how important they are, what's been checked, what the contract says, what you spend, how they perform and what needs doing next. This page explains the building blocks and how they fit together, so the rest of the help centre makes sense.
The building blocks
| Building block | What it is |
|---|---|
| Supplier record | One record per supplier, holding its details, contacts, tier, stage, forms, checks, contract, money, risk, performance, files and history. Open any supplier to see it in a side panel. See Supplier records. |
| Tier | How important and risky the supplier is: T1 Strategic, T2 Key, T3 Approved or T4 Transactional. The tier decides which checks and tasks are created, how often risk and contracts are reviewed, the governance meetings, and who must approve go-live. See Supplier tiers. |
| Stage | Where the supplier is in its lifecycle: Intake, Triage, Diligence, Negotiation, Active, Under review, Offboarding or Offboarded. |
| Area | The category the supplier belongs to, such as Technology or Facilities. Areas drive the Area filter, category plans and (on Professional and above) access by area. |
| Forms | Questionnaires such as the intake request, finance set-up, security questionnaire or privacy assessment. Each form has a person who completes it and a team that approves it. Some go to the supplier through the portal. Some block go-live until approved. See Modules and forms. |
| Tasks | Jobs assigned to a person with a due date. Most are created automatically (for example the onboarding checklist for the supplier's tier), and you can add your own. See Tasks and notifications. |
| Stakeholders | The people who own each step, grouped into teams such as Procurement, Legal, Security, Privacy and Finance. Automatic tasks go to the first person in the right team. See Stakeholders and templates. |
| Modules | Features you switch on or off to match how you work: sourcing, purchase requests, supplier portal, governance, service improvement, third-party risk, payments, spend, renewals, offboarding and the AI assistant. The Dashboard, onboarding, tasks and stakeholders are always on. |
| Audit trail | Every change is logged with who did it and when. It can't be edited or deleted, and a tamper check proves it. See Audit trail and packs. |
From a business need to a clean exit
The Process page (under Setup) shows the whole journey in seven steps, each with an owner, what "done" looks like and the forms involved.
- Requirement. Someone needs something. In Sourcing you record the need, budget and must-haves. The value is checked against your sourcing policy thresholds to suggest the route (one quote, three quotes, a formal tender). For one-off purchases from suppliers you already use, there's Purchase requests instead.
- Source: RFI and RFP. You invite suppliers, collect bids, or send one price sheet to several suppliers and compare quotes.
- Evaluate and award. Bids are scored against weighted criteria. Awarding creates the supplier record and starts onboarding.
- Onboard and due diligence. The tier's checklist tasks are created and routed to each team. Forms are completed (by your team or the supplier through the portal) and approved. Bank details are verified with a penny test and call-back. Company, sanctions and modern slavery checks are recorded. See Onboarding.
- Contract and go-live. When every go-live gate is green, the right person for the tier signs off and the supplier becomes Active. Contract dates, notice periods and committed spend are recorded.
- Manage and monitor. Renewal and notice deadlines, spend against commitment, invoices, risk re-assessments, certificates, governance meetings, scorecards, obligations and service improvements are all tracked, and the Dashboard flags whatever needs attention.
- Offboard. A 10-step exit checklist covers notice, data return, access removal, final accounts and removing bank details. See Offboarding.
How work finds the right person
- Every automatic task has a team (for example Legal) and is assigned to the first stakeholder in that team, or to a named person if you've set one for that team and area in Settings › Who reviews what, by area.
- Each person can filter the app to their own work with Show work for in the top bar, and sees a count on the Tasks menu item.
- The bell shows notifications, and the Dashboard's Do these first panel shows the five most urgent items across everything, money and fixed deadlines first.
- Each person can add a private calendar feed with notice deadlines, contract obligations and their tasks.
Where the figures come from
Every figure in SupplierVault comes from something entered or approved by your team: contract fields, invoices, usage entries, savings, scores and so on. Nothing is pulled from your bank. If you connect your accounting software, supplier bills are also read from it, read only. Money is shown in your reporting currency, converted at the rates Finance enters in Settings. Each contract, invoice and bid keeps its own currency. For the formulas behind each figure see How figures are calculated.
What SupplierVault does, and what it leaves to you
| SupplierVault does | SupplierVault never |
|---|---|
| Holds the supplier record, forms and audit trail | Moves money, makes payments or sends test payments |
| Assigns and tracks tasks across teams | Connects to bank accounts or reads bank data |
| Records the outcome of checks your teams carry out | Stores full bank account numbers (only the last 4 digits) |
| Flags renewals, expiries, overdue reviews and held invoices | Runs credit checks |
| On Professional and above, runs automatic checks against the UK Sanctions List and the Modern Slavery statement registry, and saves the result as evidence | Gives legal, financial or regulatory advice |
Automatic checks spot possible matches; your team still decides what a possible match means. See Company and sanctions checks.
Templates, AI readings and AI answers are guides only. Your legal team must check every template before use, and you should check anything the AI reads or drafts before you rely on it.
The AI features
Three features use AI (Anthropic's Claude), and each only proposes. Nothing is saved until a person checks and accepts it:
- The contract reader fills in contract fields from a PDF.
- The invoice reader fills in an invoice from a PDF.
- The AI assistant answers questions about your records and drafts emails, purchase requests and improvement ideas.
Related
Still have a question?Email hello@suppliervault.co.uk or use the contact form. Try anything safely in the live demo.