How to Enable/Disable Scoring Vendor Responses

How to Enable/Disable Scoring Vendor Responses?

When Issuing RFPs to Vendors, RFP360 provides a setting to Score Vendor Responses. This setting is directly tied to how RFP360 updates the RFP status at the due date and time. RFP status’ determine when and if a vendor is able to submit their responses.

 

How does the Score Vendor Responses setting affect an RFP status?

  • When this setting is enabled, the RFP360 platform automatically moves the RFP status from ‘Awaiting Responses’ to ‘Scoring’ at the RFP due date and time. 
  • When this setting is disabled, the RFP360 platform automatically moves the RFP status from ‘Awaiting Responses’ to ‘Scoring Closed’ at the RFP due date and time.

 

How do RFP statuses affect when a vendor is able to submit their responses? 

  • If the RFP status is ‘Awaiting Responses’ or ‘Scoring’ a Vendor is able to submit their responses in RFP360.
  • If the RFP status has been moved to ‘Scoring Closed’, either automatically or manually, a Vendor will no longer be able to submit their responses in RFP360. 

 

What if I don’t score Vendor responses, but I want to accept late submissions?

No problem, we understand that as an RFP Issuer, you may choose to not score your RFP responses and also accept late submissions. In this scenario, it is critical that you opt to enable the setting to enable scoring on the first step of creating a new RFP. This will prevent the status of your RFP from automatically moving to ‘Scoring Closed’ at its assigned due date and time.

NOTE: You will not be required to score the vendor responses or set up scoring criteria if you enable this setting. 

 
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During the RFP creation, you may also wish to select the setting to Hide scoring criteria from Vendors as this will safeguard any arbitrary point values assigned to sections from being shown to your vendors considering you won’t actually be scoring the responses. 
 
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Any section writer(s) will automatically be assigned to the RFP scoring team. To edit the scoring team, visit the RFP Dashboard and select Add Scorers, then click on the trashcan icon to the right of the name to delete the scorer. On this screen, you may also adjust point values associated with sections. It is recommended you adjust each section to a point value of zero.
 
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Helpful notes: If you have any active RFPs that have been created with the Score Vendor Responses setting disabled, and the RFP status is still Awaiting Responses your best option to avoid locking out late vendor submissions is to extend the RFP deadline. Click here to learn how to change RFP due dates .

We also recommend messaging all vendors via the Message board to encourage timely submissions. Click here to learn more about Messaging with Vendors in RFP360 .

If the setting for Score Vendor Responses is disabled at the time of RFP creation, enabling it after the fact, unfortunately, will not allow vendors to submit responses past the deadline. The system will allow you to visit the RFP details tab and check the box to enable the setting; however, the system doesn’t save the setting on the back-end of the application and the RFP status will automatically be moved to Scoring Closed at the RFP due date and time.


If your Vendor is still having trouble submitting their proposal after the deadline, and the RFP is not in a status of ‘Scoring Closed’ on your side, here is a helpful article you can send them about How to Submit a Proposal After the Due Date .

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