What are Smart Suppliers?
Smart Suppliers is a Ply feature that lets you register the cost of different suppliers for each material in your catalog. Once you've added those suppliers, Ply can automatically pick the best option for you (by default, the lowest cost), so you always know where to source each material for less.
Adding suppliers to a material
All supplier pricing is added manually, right inside each material. Here's how:
Go to Catalog > Materials and open the material you want to edit.
Click the Prices & Suppliers tab.
Click Add Supplier, choose the supplier, and enter that supplier's cost for the material (for example, $10).
Repeat for as many suppliers as you need. There's no limit.
That's it. You now have a list of suppliers and their prices for that material.
Turning on Smart Suppliers
Once your suppliers are loaded, you can activate the feature:
Go to Settings > Procurement > Smart Suppliers.
Turn on the Smart Suppliers toggle.
With it on, Ply reviews all the supplier prices you've registered across your materials and, by default, flags the lowest-cost supplier as the "Smart Supplier" for each one. So if you've added five suppliers with different prices to a material, Ply will detect which of the five is cheapest and set that as the Smart Supplier. In short: the feature always looks for the lowest cost.
Choosing how Smart Suppliers are applied
After the toggle is on, you'll pick an application method under Select Method:
Adjust Automatically: Ply automatically sets the lowest-cost supplier as the Smart Supplier across all your materials, with no extra steps.
Suggest Adjustments: Ply gives you a list of all materials that have supplier prices configured. You open the suggestions and confirm, case by case, which supplier you want as the Smart Supplier.
The system will only give you suggestions if you have options added under Prices & Suppliers. Otherwise, it won't.
Preferred Suppliers: when you don't want the cheapest option
Sometimes the lowest cost isn't what you want. Maybe for a specific material you'd rather go with a mid-range supplier because the quality is better, even if it costs a little more. For those cases, you can set a Preferred Supplier.
A Preferred Supplier is the supplier you manually choose for a material, regardless of whether it's the cheapest.
To set one:
Turn off the Smart Supplier toggle for that specific material.
2. Checkboxes will appear next to each supplier. Check the one you want as your preferred.
Why bother? Because the next time you create a PO for that material and choose to build it for your Preferred Supplier, Ply will automatically pull in that supplier and its cost, with no manual editing needed.
Disabling Smart Suppliers in bulk
Yes, you can turn Smart Suppliers off across all materials at once:
Keep the general Smart Suppliers toggle on (under Settings > Procurement > Smart Suppliers). This one should always stay on.
Under Select Method, switch from Adjust Automatically to Suggest Adjustments.
Switching to Suggest Adjustments stops Ply from automatically applying the lowest-cost supplier everywhere, and lets you keep the per-material Smart Supplier toggle off. That's how you effectively disable Smart Suppliers in bulk.
Important: Preferred Suppliers need the general toggle on
Here's a key detail: if the general Smart Suppliers setting (Settings > Procurement) is off, you won't be able to register Preferred Suppliers at all.
So if all you want to use is Preferred Suppliers, do this:
Turn on the general Smart Suppliers toggle.
Set Select Method to Suggest Adjustments.
Don't make any adjustments.
Go into the material, register your prices per supplier, and mark your Preferred Supplier.
FAQ
Can I set the prices in Prices & Suppliers in bulk for each supplier? Not yet. For now, you'll need to open each material, go to Prices & Suppliers, and add each supplier and cost manually.
Can I disable Smart Suppliers in bulk for all materials? Yes. Keep the general toggle on and change Select Method from Adjust Automatically to Suggest Adjustments (see "Disabling Smart Suppliers in bulk" above).