The Best Quote, Scored on a Number Nobody Set
Our quotation comparison weighed each supplier on price, delivery and a vendor rating. Until 1 October 2026 the rating was a number on the quotation that nothing filled in, and every scoring engine quietly dropped it. It now carries each supplier's stored track record, and it is a choice you switch on rather than a default you inherit.
The conclusion first
Switch the supplier score on for any comparison where a late or cancelled delivery costs you more than the price gap between quotes. It now reads each supplier's stored scorecard from their past orders. Leave it off where you are buying from people you have never ordered from, because a newcomer is scored at the average and the factor has little to tell you.
A quotation comparison is the one place in procurement where software can genuinely make a better decision than a person, because a person comparing six quotes on four dimensions is doing arithmetic badly. So it is worth knowing exactly what the arithmetic is, and what it was until recently.
What the comparison does
You pick a request for quotation and choose what matters: lowest price, shortest distance, fastest delivery and, since 1 October 2026, the supplier's track record. The same scoring runs automatically when a new quotation arrives, using defaults your organisation sets once, and it waits for a person to finalise the award.
It scores every quotation on that request, excluding any that have been rejected. The result is stored, a score, a ranking and a recommendation against each response, and the winner can be marked as the best quote. A short written explanation of the ranking is generated from the same figures.
That is a real comparison engine with a persisted result, and it is more than most systems in this bracket attempt.
Where each number comes from
| Factor | Source | When it is missing | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | The quotation's total amount | Always present | Always |
| Distance | Your address to the supplier's | Scored as zero | Always |
| Delivery time | The supplier's average from past orders | Scored as zero | Always |
| Supplier score | The supplier's stored scorecard, 0 to 100 | The average of the scored suppliers | 1 October 2026 |
The supplier score is the one that changed, and it is worth being precise about what it replaced rather than simply announcing it.
The comparison used to carry a vendor rating: a number on the quotation, defaulting to 3.5, that nothing computed and nobody entered. Worse, every scoring engine ignored it and spread its weight over the other factors. A buyer who gave it 40% was really comparing on price and delivery alone, while the screen said otherwise.
A factor on the screen that the arithmetic drops is not a criterion. It is a reassurance.
The score now comes from the supplier, not the quote. Every night the system scores each supplier from their purchase orders: on-time delivery, orders cancelled or rejected, disputes, lead time and its stability, and price drift, weighted into one figure out of a hundred. That figure is on the supplier's own page, and it is what the comparison reads.
What switching it on actually does
Three quotes, price and supplier score weighted equally
Each factor is scaled across the quotes in front of it, so the score decides between these suppliers, not against an absolute standard. With two quotes, equal weights tie whenever one is cheaper and the other better rated.
Read the newcomer row again, because it is the decision we made deliberately. A supplier you have never ordered from has no record, and any number we invented would either reward or punish them for that. So they sit at the average of the others and the score is silent about them; price and delivery decide.
The other thing the comparison cannot see
It compares header totals. One number per supplier.
That is adequate when every supplier quoted the same basket, and misleading when they did not. The cheapest total may be the one that omitted a line, substituted a grade, or quoted a different quantity. Line-by-line comparison is the thing competitive sourcing actually needs, and the reason it is a separate build is structural: quotation lines are stored on the quotation rather than as rows. That is covered in The Quote Lines That Are Not Rows.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A weighted comparison on price, distance, delivery time and the supplier's stored score, scoped to one request for quotation, excluding rejected quotes.
- The supplier score read from each supplier's nightly scorecard, with suppliers who have no orders yet scored at the average rather than at an invented value.
- Automatic scoring when a quotation arrives, on defaults your organisation sets, with the award left to a person.
- Persisted results, a score, a ranking and a recommendation per response, and a best-quote status on the winning quotation.
- Requests for quotation with relational line items, sent to selected suppliers, with responses recorded.
More we can add to your workspace
- Line-by-line comparison across suppliers. The score is computed on the header total.
- A check that suppliers quoted the same basket before they are compared.
- Inspection results in the supplier score. Quality there is measured on whole orders, cancelled or rejected, so a delivery accepted with a short line counts as good.
- Sealed bids, panel scoring, or any evaluation involving more than one assessor.
Where we point you to a specialist
- The supplier score is off until you switch it on, for automatic scoring and for each manual run. Turning it on changes which quote wins, and that is a buyer's decision rather than ours.
- A score summarises a supplier's history with you. It says nothing about a supplier you have not yet bought from, and we would rather show that than guess.
- This is market-neutral. It is the arithmetic of a weighted score; Egypt is where the competitive-quotation habit is strongest among our readers.
What we can build for Egypt on top of the standard product
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point for Egypt, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do there. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are in the product because Kenyan clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself. The same door is open here. If ETA e-invoicing, an Arabic right-to-left interface, a bank or mobile money feed, a statutory return format, a rule specific to how your operation runs, or a link to a system you already have is what stands between you and a decision, tell us and we will scope it as a build — written spec, timeline and price — before you commit to anything.
ETA e-invoicing and e-receipts
Document structuring to the prescribed format and submission against the Authority's interface, including the part vendors skip — rejection handling, resubmission, and a daily report of sales with no registration identifier.
Arabic interface, banks and payments
Arabic text with right-to-left layout and bilingual document templates, plus bank feeds and local payment gateways wired into the Payments Register.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
Payroll and statutory returns
An Egyptian payroll engine with income tax bands and social insurance contributions, producing schedules in the layout your filing body expects rather than a spreadsheet rebuilt each month.
Systems you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. No roadmap slide, and no pretending in a demo that something exists when it does not.
Tell us what you need integratedFour questions about any quote-scoring feature
Where does the supplier rating come from?
A good answer sounds like
A computation from delivery and quality history.
What it actually means
Ours is computed nightly from your purchase orders. Ask any vendor to show you the formula, and ask whether the engine actually reads it.
What value is used when a supplier has no history?
A good answer sounds like
Something neutral, stated, or the factor is dropped for that supplier.
What it actually means
Ours uses the average of the scored suppliers. A silent mid value is the common shortcut, and it turns a criterion into a constant.
Is the comparison on totals or on lines?
A good answer sounds like
Lines, matched across suppliers.
What it actually means
Header totals miss an omitted line, and an omitted line is the most common reason one quote is cheapest.
Can two people score independently?
A good answer sounds like
A panel, with each assessor's scores kept separate.
What it actually means
Ours is a single weighting. For donor-funded or public buying a panel is usually a requirement rather than a preference.
Set your weights deliberately, once
Decide with your commercial team how much price, speed and a supplier's record should count, and set those as your defaults. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a scoring tool and a decoration.
Set the weightsFrequently asked questions
What goes into the supplier score?
Each supplier's purchase orders with you: how often they delivered on time, how many orders were cancelled or rejected, disputes, average lead time and how much it varies, and how their prices have moved. It is recalculated every night and shown on the supplier's page, so you can see the figure the comparison is using.
What weights would you actually recommend?
Whatever reflects your commercial reality. For most buyers that is heavily price-weighted; for anyone whose stockouts are expensive, delivery and the supplier score deserve more. The important part is that somebody decided it rather than accepting a default.
Does the comparison exclude expired or withdrawn quotes?
It excludes rejected quotations and scopes to one request for quotation. Anything else, a quote past its validity or one that arrived against the wrong basket, is yours to reject first, and rejecting it is the mechanism that removes it.
