Open Registry > Supplier engagement. Everything you asked your suppliers, and everything they sent you, is here, sorted by who has to act:
- Needs you: answers to review, offers to decide. The count beside Supplier engagement in the rail is this one.
- Waiting on them: asks your suppliers have not answered yet.
- Done: settled asks and answers, kept as the record.
The list is a table with the Raw material, the Supplier and its State. Choose a Status (All, the default, lists Needs you first, then Needs you, Waiting on them or Done, each with its count), filter by Type or About, or search. Click a row to open it in a panel on the right: what you asked, what came back, and what you can do now. An answer about one of your sources opens that source on Supply chain > Raw materials, where its Supplier data tab shows the same answer.
What your customers ask of you is on Registry > Customer requests. See How do I answer a customer's ask?
Using an answer
The answer shows the supplier's figures: who calculated them, the climate change figure, how many of the 16 PEF categories they gave, and how long they are valid. See everything they shared shows the rest. Review on the source, or the answer's action here, opens the Use sheet.
The Use sheet
The Use sheet says what using the data would do, before you do it:
- Climate, Coverage (for example "1 of 16 PEF categories") and Valid to, with the method.
- Checks, each with a sentence: whether it fits the source (food, per kg, enough categories), and whether it counts in your reported footprints and why. A failing check says why and turns Use this data off.
- What changes: which source it lands on and what it replaces, how many products recalculate, which of your other sources of the same ingredient are unchanged, and that your current figures stay in the source's records.
- How many of your plan's supplier data places it uses.
The first time you use a supplier's figures, the sheet says they will see that your organisation uses them.
Then:
- Use this data puts their figures where the sheet says. Where it goes decides what happens: on a raw material or good already in use, the products using it recalculate in the background; as a new one, nothing uses it until you put it in a recipe.
- Save as record only is offered when the data cannot be used, for example data in a category models do not use: it keeps the data as a record. On a plan that models nothing, data you find on the Registry is taken with Save as record, and you put it on one of your items from Unassigned.
- Not this one leaves it.
A partial answer
A supplier can answer with a carbon footprint alone, or a few categories. On a library source the library fills the rest; on a purchased good you model, your model fills the rest, and the good is marked Partial. The Use sheet says which. See Partial footprints.
Answers through the email form
A supplier who answered through the form (because they are not on Sustained) shows as Submitted through the form · review it. Nothing is visible to anyone until you accept it: you confirm its category, and their figure goes on the item you asked about. Reject withdraws their submission; you can give a reason for your own records.
Offers
A supplier can offer you their data before you ask. Accept puts it with your supplier data and connects you, so they can share more with you later. Decline shares nothing, and they are not told.
Redeem invite token, at the top of the page, connects you with a supplier from a token another Sustained customer gave you.