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I hold inventory for a large number of products, many of those products can be made by more than one manufacturer.

At the moment, if I want pricing from a supplier, the only real option in Xero is to raise a purchase order. That doesn’t work well in practice, because quite often I need to request prices before I’ve decided who I’m buying from, or before I even have an existing supplier relationship set up.

For example, if a new manufacturer opens nearby, I might want to send them a list of specific items from my inventory and ask for pricing, without committing to an order. Another common scenario is when we design a new product, add it to inventory, and then need to get quotes from one or more manufacturers before deciding who will produce it.
What’s missing is a simple way to request a quote from suppliers using existing inventory items, as a step before raising a purchase order.

Ideally, this would allow me to select inventory items and quantities, send a quote request to one or more suppliers, receive pricing back, and then convert the chosen quote into a purchase order once a decision has been made. This step wouldn’t affect stock levels or financials, it would purely be for pricing and comparison.

This would reflect how purchasing and manufacturing decisions actually work and would make supplier sourcing much clearer and more efficient.