A material request asks for what a crew needs, without a vendor and without a price. A Purchaser or Admin turns it into an RFQ or an order.
Before you start
You need access to at least 1 project.
You need the materials, the quantities, the delivery address and the date they are needed on site.
Your company may require a cost code, class code or phase code on every line.
Steps
Click + in the top navigation bar, then Request Material.
Select the project, then type a name over the request name.
Select the Address and set the Requested Delivery Date.
Fill in Attention to and Delivery instructions if the driver needs them.
Search for each material, then enter the Qty and the Unit.
Add a cost code, class code or phase code if your company requires one.
Click Add note on a line to explain a substitution, a location or a scope detail.
Click Save to keep it as a draft you can come back to.
Click Request to send it for processing.
What happens next
The request appears on the Requests tab and its status becomes Requested. A Purchaser or Admin picks it up, chooses the vendors and turns it into 1 or more RFQs or orders. Every order it produces is then listed on the request itself.
Once it has been processed you can no longer change the materials on it. The request page shows the orders instead of the line items.
If your company reviews requests before they are processed, yours goes to an approver first and waits there. Review is not turned on for every company.
Notes and limits
A request never carries a vendor or a price. Both are set when it becomes an RFQ or an order.
Click Import Materials to bring a long list in rather than typing it line by line.
If a material is not in your company catalog, the search offers to request it. A Purchaser or Admin reviews it, and the request cannot move on until they do.
Delivery details are locked once the request has become an order or an inventory request.
Attach photos, sketches or field notes from Attachments, and add the people who should follow it from Contacts.
Cancelling a request
Click Cancel to stop a request. The button is there while the request is a draft or is waiting to be processed, and it is gone once a Purchaser has processed it.
Cancelling does not delete anything. The request stays on record with its history, and Restore puts it back: a request that had been sent returns to Requested, and one that was still a draft returns to Draft.
Best practices
Put everything the crew needs on 1 request. A processed request cannot take new lines, so the second thought becomes a second request and somebody in the office merges them by hand.
Name the request after the area or the crew, not the date. The list shows the name beside the request number, and that is how a Purchaser tells 3 requests from the same morning apart.
Attach a photo rather than describing an unusual fitting in the note. The person buying it has never seen the wall you are standing in front of.
Set the delivery date to when you need it on site, not when you want it ordered. The date drives the calendar and what the vendor is asked to hit.
If this doesn't work
Start a chat from the Messenger in the bottom-left of this page, or email help@subbase.io. Include the order or project number and what you expected to happen.