Supplier Zhang · attachment ship-final-really-final-V7.xlsxAttachment
Another mail CC’d a colleague who already leftxlsx
Finance has not opened it · sales already promised a discount verballyzip
Cannot find it in the mailboxNone
Supplier side · the same PO
Email fits notice. It is not a purchasing system. More attachments mean “latest,” “final” and “really final” exist at once. CC lists expire. Personal mailboxes walk company assets out the door. Suppliers will not install a store-reviewed client just to ship you goods. A mini program or a logged-in H5 is the normal supplier side. How accept and settle should run. See How supplier orders and settlement should run.
Settlement fights are not attitude. There is no single quantity
You use order qty, they use ship qty, the warehouse uses received qty, finance uses invoice qty. Four emails, four sheets, month-end is a meeting. The supplier side forces accept qty, ship qty, received qty and invoice qty in columns, with a reason code on variance. That is the same back office as internal inventory. See Why one back office keeps multi-end data from forking. If internally you still take orders in a group, the external portal will not hold either. Compare WeCom chat is not a business entry.
Isolate permissions by supplier. Do not build a disk everyone can download
Each account sees only its POs, prices and receiving records. Do not put price policy on a forwardable sheet. WeChat or Alipay depends on where suppliers already pay and authenticate. See WeChat Mini Program or Alipay Mini Program. Invite one person, one account. Offboarding can stop it. Write the settlement cycle into the portal so some people do not use calendar months and others use delivery batches—and month-end does not return to email to argue definitions.
Phase one is not a “supplier social platform”
News, rankings and ad slots are not what purchasing wants. Phase one is three jobs: confirm the PO, return the shipment, handle variance. Date changes go through a request—not another long email. Attachments can still hold a QA report, but the main quantity must live in a field, not only on PDF page 7. Purchasing must also stop “email only counts”: pay on a system ticket; a verbal discount needs a number. Otherwise after the portal goes live the real numbers stay in the mailbox.
Delivery windows and refusals belong in the portal. Do not open another email thread
Suppliers often wait at the door with no warehouse staff. Write receiving hours, unload rules and refuse reason codes in the portal. One fewer argument on site, one fewer “we thought you received it” in settlement. When DaXi Technology builds a supplier side, we start from the Excels you are already forwarding and turn drifting columns into status. To close email attachments, go to the mobile service page and say how purchasing collects sheets now. Also review Why work has to happen on the phone.