Has your customer invited you to a questionnaire? This article explains what questionnaires are and guides you through answering one.
What is a questionnaire?
Your customers use questionnaires to get to know your company better. A questionnaire asks about basic information, such as facility processes and production capacity, and about compliance, such as certifications, audits and documents.
Where to find your questionnaires
Go to Vendor Compliance → Questionnaires and open the Requests tab. It lists all questionnaires your customers have sent you.
The State column shows where each questionnaire is:
Open: The questionnaire is waiting for your answers.
In Review: You’ve submitted your answers and your customer is reviewing them.
Changes Requested: Your customer has asked you to change some answers. Open the questionnaire and update the answers marked Denied.
The Questions and Progress columns show how many questions you’ve answered. Due dates in red are overdue.
Check who the questionnaire is about
A questionnaire can be about your own company, or about another company you’re asked to answer for. Check the About column to see which one it is.
Open a questionnaire
You can open a questionnaire in four ways:
Email notification: Click Begin Questionnaire in the email.
Dashboard: Click Respond next to the questionnaire under Your active tasks.
Notifications: Click the bell icon in the top bar and click Answer or Respond next to the questionnaire.
Questionnaires page: Go to Vendor Compliance → Questionnaires, open the Requests tab and click the questionnaire name.
Use values from your company profile
When you open a questionnaire, you’re asked whether to use values from your company profile:
From profile: Questions that already have an answer on your company profile are pre-filled for you. This saves time if your profile is up to date.
Fill manually: All questions start empty and you answer them yourself.
Choose an option and click Continue. Either way, you can still edit every answer before you submit.
Find your way around a questionnaire
At the top, you see the questionnaire name and state, a short description, who requested it and when, and who it’s about. On the right is the Sync profile data button (see Sync your answers to the company profile below).
On the left, Completion shows how many questions you’ve filled in. Below it, the questionnaire’s sections and questions are listed, so you can see what’s coming up.
In the middle, you answer the questions:
Switch between View all sections and View by sections, collapse all sections, or use Filter to find specific questions.
Read the Explanation below each question to understand what’s being asked. Click Show more to read the full text.
Enter your answer under Your answer.
On the right, the Summary shows how many questions you’ve answered and how many are approved, in review, denied or not answered. This is also where you submit your answers.
Question tags
Each question shows a status tag in its top-right corner:
Not answered: Action required. Provide an answer.
Answered, not submitted: Your answer is saved but not yet sent to your customer.
In review: No action required. Your customer is reviewing your answer.
Approved: No action required.
Denied: Action required. Check the comments on the question and update your answer.
Some questions also show these tags:
MANDATORY: Your customer requires you to answer this question. Mandatory questions are also marked with a red asterisk (*) in the question list on the left.
GLOBAL: The question is linked to a global field on the company profile, such as the official name or address.
Sync your answers to the company profile
Answers you give in a questionnaire are saved in that questionnaire only. To copy them onto the company profile of the company the questionnaire is about:
Click Sync profile data in the top-right corner of the questionnaire.
In Sync answers to the company profile, tick the answers you want to copy, or tick Select all.
Click Sync selected to copy the ticked answers, or Sync all to copy all answers.
⚠️ Existing values on the company profile are overwritten.
Good to know
Comments
If an answer is denied, check the comments on that question. Your customer may have explained why.
If a question is unclear, leave a comment below it to let your customer know.
Not available
If you can’t answer a question, for example because it doesn’t apply to your company, click Not available. This counts as an answer. To undo it, click Clear N/A.
💡 We recommend always adding a comment to explain to your customer why the question doesn’t apply. This helps your customer understand your answer and makes it less likely to be denied.
Upload requested documents, certificates and audits
Some questions ask you to upload a document, certificate or audit. You can link one you’ve already uploaded or upload a new one. See Uploading documents, certificates and audits in a questionnaire.
Change an answer
Before you submit, you can change an answer at any time: hover over it and click the pencil icon.
After you submit, you can’t change your answers yourself. See Need to change an answer after submitting? below.
Submit your answers for review
Once you submit, you can’t change your answers anymore. Before you click Submit for review, check that all answers are correct and complete.
Once you’ve answered all questions and checked them, click Submit for review in the Summary on the right. Your customer is then able to review your answers, and the questionnaire’s state changes to In Review.
Can’t click Submit for review? The button only becomes active when all questions are answered. Check Not answered in the Summary to see how many are left. If you can’t answer a question, mark it as Not available and add a comment explaining why. This counts as an answer.
Need to change an answer after submitting?
After you submit, only your customer can reopen answers for changes:
Contact your customer and tell them which answers need to be changed.
Your customer denies those answers and changes the status of the questionnaire.
You can then update the denied answers and submit the questionnaire again.