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The Buyer is the sourcing engine of your procurement team. Buyers take purchase requests that a Procurement Manager has assigned to them, turn them into sourcing events (RFIs, RFPs, RFQs), manage the supplier base, and issue purchase orders to the winning suppliers.

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What Buyers see

The Buyer sidebar covers the full sourcing workflow:
  • Home — the procurement dashboard.
  • Intakes → My Assignments — purchase requests assigned to this Buyer.
  • Sourcing — Request History (all RFIs, RFPs, and RFQs) and New Request to start a sourcing event.
  • Purchase Orders — Order History and New Purchase Order.
  • Suppliers — All Suppliers, Add Supplier, and Evaluations.
Buyers do not see Budgets or Reports in their navigation, and they cannot access the PM approval queue.

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Assigned intakes only

Buyers work from an assignment model, not a shared queue. A Buyer only sees the purchase requests a Procurement Manager has explicitly assigned to them. Until a PM assigns a request, it simply doesn’t appear in the Buyer’s list — and a Buyer cannot open or act on an unassigned request even with a direct link. Once assigned, the request appears under Intakes → My Assignments, and the Buyer takes it from there: reviewing line items, adding notes, and launching sourcing.

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Running RFIs, RFPs, and RFQs

From Sourcing → New Request, the Buyer picks the right instrument:
  • RFI (Request for Information) — gather capability information from the market.
  • RFP (Request for Proposal) — collect and score full proposals.
  • RFQ (Request for Quotation) — collect priced quotes against defined line items.
These can run sequentially — an RFI can be promoted into an RFP, an RFP into an RFQ, and an RFQ (or an RFP directly) into a purchase order — so the history of a sourcing exercise stays linked end to end. A typical RFQ flow:
  1. Create the RFQ (directly or from an assigned request) and define line items, deadlines, and terms.
  2. Select suppliers and issue the RFQ. Invited suppliers receive an email with a secure link to a quote portal — they don’t need a Seloria account.
  3. Answer supplier questions through the built-in Q&A thread.
  4. As quotes arrive, compare them side by side. Where the originating request calls for it, route proposals to the Requestor for technical review.
  5. Award the RFQ to the winning supplier(s). If the award amount exceeds your organization’s approval threshold — or the spend has no linked budget and unbudgeted-spend control is on — the award pauses in Pending Approval until a Procurement Manager approves it.

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Managing suppliers

Buyers own the supplier master: create suppliers individually or import in bulk from a CSV/Excel file, maintain contact details, and record supplier evaluations. Buyers can also maintain certain shared catalogs in Settings — currencies, tax rules, cost categories, addresses, incoterms, and supplier categories.

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Sending purchase orders

Buyers create purchase orders — generated from an awarded RFQ or from scratch — and send them to suppliers by email. If a PO’s amount exceeds the organization’s PO approval threshold, sending is blocked until a Procurement Manager approves it; Seloria opens the approval automatically and notifies the approvers. The Buyer can track the outcome of their own approval requests, but not the org-wide approval queue.

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Budgets

Buyers can create draft budgets, but only a Procurement Manager can activate them. Budget amounts (totals, spent, available) are visible to PMs and Admins only.