Onboarding for vendors and suppliers

Manufacturing supplier onboarding checklist

This checklist guides your manufacturing suppliers through your onboarding process, ensuring all technical quality, safety certifications, and supply chain standards are met.

Use this template to onboard your suppliers

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Manufacturing supplier onboarding

Welcome to our supplier network. This checklist will guide you through our onboarding process, ensuring all technical quality, safety certifications, and supply chain standards are met before we begin our partnership.

No due date

Link tasks to actions, such as completing forms or booking meetings

Safety certifications and initial documentation

In this section, we will collect and verify your official documentation to ensure your manufacturing processes meet required legal and industry safety standards.

Submit safety and quality certifications

Please upload all relevant safety certifications and industry-specific quality standards documentation for your facilities and products, such as ISO, CE, or equivalent.

No due date

Sign the supplier agreement

Review and sign our standard supplier agreement outlining terms, conditions, and basic operational expectations.

No due date

Verify submitted certifications

Review the certifications provided by the supplier to ensure they are current, accurate, and meet our internal quality and legal requirements.

No due date Team member

Tasks can be for the suppliers being onboarded, or for the team

Quality assurance and product sampling

We need to thoroughly evaluate physical samples of your goods to confirm they meet our baseline quality and technical parameters before proceeding to mass orders.

Send product samples for QA testing

Ship representative product samples to our testing facility so we can verify technical quality and specification adherence.

No due date

Conduct QA testing and laboratory verification

Perform rigorous quality assurance testing and laboratory verification on the provided samples to confirm they meet company quality standards.

No due date Team member

Review QA test results together

Share the results of the laboratory verification with the supplier and discuss any adjustments or approvals needed.

No due date Team member

Sustainability and supply chain integrity

As part of our commitment to responsible sourcing, we require all suppliers to adhere to strict Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards.

Complete the ESG and sustainability questionnaire

Fill out our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) questionnaire to detail your corporate sustainability practices, labor conditions, and environmental impact.

No due date

Provide supply chain traceability reports

Upload documentation that maps out your raw material sourcing to help us ensure complete supply chain integrity and ethical sourcing.

No due date

Evaluate ESG adherence

Review the ESG questionnaire and traceability reports to confirm the supplier meets our corporate sustainability mandates.

No due date Team member

First shipment audit

This final phase serves as a real-world trial. We will assess an initial shipment to verify that logistical promises, including packaging and delivery times, are honored in practice.

Dispatch the initial trial shipment

Prepare and dispatch the first formal shipment of goods according to the agreed-upon standards, paying close attention to packaging and labeling requirements.

No due date

Perform first shipment audit

Conduct a comprehensive audit on the first delivery to verify that packaging, labeling, and delivery lead-time consistency matches our operational requirements.

No due date Team member

Finalize supplier approval status

Upon a successful first shipment audit, formally approve the supplier in the system and transition the relationship to standard procurement operations.

No due date Team member

Click the button below to edit or add tasks, add due dates, and much more...

Free plan • No credit card needed

Customize this template

Or build your own

How it works

Add suppliers to your checklist

Just type an email address and we'll do the rest.

We'll create a checklist, invite them in by email, and even sync progress up with your CRM.

Guides suppliers to take action

Move from to-do to done with task actions.

You can collect data with forms, verify identity, ask for secure uploads, book meetings, and more.

We do the chasing up for you

We'll send friendly nudges and a helpful weekly summary to make sure your tasks get done.

The emails we send have your brand logo and colors.

Free plan • No credit card needed

Customize this template

Or build your own

Packed with useful features

Syncs with HubSpot

We bridge the gap by syncing every onboarding action back to your CRM timeline and custom fields. Works with contacts, deals, and tickets.

  • Manage checklists with the App Card
  • Adds events to your timeline
  • Syncs uploaded files and photos

Add due dates

Set relative due dates for each task, and we'll calculate the actual dates when you start a new checklist.

  • For example, due "2 weeks after the checklist is created".
  • Or, "1 week before a target completion date".

Sequential tasks

Choose how you want each section (or the whole checklist) to be completed.

Either tasks can be tackled in any order (random), or you can make sure tasks are done one after another (sequential).

Branded pages and emails

Every Onthen task page is fully branded so that it becomes a part of your business.

But we also brand the emails we send too, so every interaction with your task page makes the right first impression.

Feature packed dashboard

Not only is it easy for suppliers to work with your checklists, we give you flexible tools to manage them too.

  • Saved views for frequently accessed lists.
  • Change default columns, sort order, and filtering.
  • Use bulk actions to update many rows at once.

Free plan • No credit card needed

Customize this template

Or build your own

Frequently asked questions

How can I use this template?

Just click Customize this template above and we'll take you through a couple of simple steps to create an Onthen account and copy the manufacturing supplier onboarding template into it.

Once that's done we'll take you straight into the template editor where you can customize it to your exact needs (there's bound to be a few things you'll do differently).

Finally, once it's ready you can use it to create individual checklists (we call them 'plans') for each of your suppliers. Just type their email address and we'll do the rest. As they move through the tasks, you'll see their progress in the dashboard.

Who is this manufacturing supplier onboarding checklist for?

If you run a team that needs to onboard suppliers then the manufacturing supplier onboarding template is a perfect starting point.

You'll first be able to tailor the template to your team's needs, by editing, removing or adding tasks to suit your onboarding process. When it's perfect, onthen has all the tools you need to easily invite suppliers to it and make sure all the tasks get done, on time.

How do suppliers use it?

First you'll invite suppliers to the checklist. You can either send an invite manually, through our HubSpot integration, or by using an invite link that lets anyone with the link create a new checklist.

Your suppliers won't need to create an account or a password, they'll simply access it with a 6-digit code we'll send to their email.

It's really easy to use and there's nothing to navigate, it's a simple single page checklist that looks pretty much like you see above.

If any task gets forgotten about, we'll send email reminders to nudge your suppliers to complete everything.

Free plan • No credit card needed

Customize this template

Or build your own

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