Gosourcingwise

I had booked a trip to Portugal for two weeks in beginning of April 2020 but then corona came and the trip was cancelled. I still had the vacation from my main job and I didn’t want to cancel the it.

Since everything was in lockdown I used that time to build gosourcingwise - a web application that allows businesses to ask Quotations from their vendors. It is meant for companies already using Quickbooks accounting software.

Quick facts about the web app:

  • Allows to log in with Quickbook account
  • Pulls all items and vendors from Quickbooks
  • Keeps all items and vendors in sync via periodic sync and listening to Quickbooks webhooks
  • Allows to ask quotations from your existing vendors via automatic email or new vendors via sharing a public unique link to them
  • Creates new Purchase Order in Quickbook with correct vendor and item when Quote is accepted
  • Built with Typescript. Front end with Nextjs/React and backend with Express. Database is Mongodb which is hosted in Mongo Atlas. Shares types between frontend and backend. Application is hosted in Heroku.

Why the app was built?

I wanted to use my free two weeks doing something interesting, learning new technologies (Typescript) and to build something that was needed.

I found from Quickbooks user forums that people were asking for this kind of Request For Quotation app and so I decided to build it. Since I have lots of experience in the ERP software field I knew how the RFQ process should look like.

Companies that need this kind of tool usually are in manufacturing or project based business and need to ask many quotes from their vendors each day.

They usually ask for quotes via email and recieve them in different formats and then consolidate them in excel to compare and select the winning one.

gosourcingwise solves that problem by giving the RFQ’s structure so they become comparable and preserve history so its easier to analyze data.

Features of the tool

The tool is meant to work together with Quickbooks Online. Users will create Request For Quotations using their pre-existing vendors and items that are synced from Quickbooks.

They can create multi line RFQ, add comments, deadlines, delivery dates etc to the RFQ and then submit it to one ore more vendors.

Vendors will receive email link where they can click and enter their offer.

When user wants to get Quote from vendor that is not existing yet on their Quickbooks then they can get a link that they can give to that new vendor and the vendor can then submit their quote via the link and new vendor gets created in when the Quote is selected.

When Quotes are received the user can compare the quotes in table and select the best Quote. When the Quote is selected then new Purchase Order is automatically created in Quickbooks with correct vendor and item data.

Thats it. It’s quite simple process but the value for the users is data integrity with Quickbooks. You will end up with Purchase Orders in Quickbooks with correct vendor and item data.

Entering RFQ

RFQ Entry

Submitted RFQ’s

Submitted RFQ’s

Quote Entry

Quote Entry

Compare Quotes

Compare Quotes

Accept Quote

Accept Quote