Getting Started as an Online Ordering Customer

Silo’s online ordering module seeks to improve the order management process between vendors and their customers. The Silo portal provides a one-stop-shop for trading partners to share their catalogs digitally, create order requests, send invoices, and communicate instantly via chat.

In order to add a vendor to the trading platform, you’ll need to navigate to Contacts > Vendors in Silo, create the vendor if you haven’t already, and add at least one contact with an email address specified. Once you’ve done that, you can press ‘Invite to online ordering’ to invite them to create a Silo account.
There may be a delay of 1 business day between when your invite is generated and when your trading partner receives the invite. If your trading partner does not receive the invitation, please check to ensure that you have the correct email address in Silo for them. If issues persist, please contact your Silo CSM.

Navigate to Orders > Online Orders > Outgoing Requests and press the ‘Create new request’ button. From there, you will select your vendor in the Vendor Information section. If you do not see them listed, you may need to first invite them to online ordering. They will not be available for trading until they create a Silo account.
Once you’ve selected your vendor, you can begin adding items to your request. We recommend doing this by pressing the ‘Add catalog items’ button if it's available. Here, you will be able to add items directly from your vendor's catalog.
If you don’t see the item you want in the catalog, or their catalog isn't available, you can add free-text order items by pressing ‘Add manual item’.

Once you submit your request, your vendor will receive an email notification and will see an indicator for the new request when they log into Silo.
If the vendor makes any updates to the request, including confirming it, you will be notified via email. You will also see an indicator in Silo for orders with changes that you haven't viewed yet.
You can designate a vendor as "trusted" from the Vendors screen in Silo. Any vendors you invite will be trusted vendors by default. Trusted vendors are able to simultaneously make adjustments to your order request and confirm it. For example, if they are out of a product you requested but have a substitute item available, they may replace the item with the substitute and also confirm the request. Vendors who are not trusted would be able to substitute the item, but would have to wait for you to confirm the request after they make the change.
Both the vendor and customer can take action to update the status of an order request. Once the request is confirmed, it means that both parties have agreed to the request and changes to items can no longer be made.

For more information about how to use online ordering as a vendor, see the following article: