Tepia builds custom vendor and supplier portals where suppliers onboard themselves, acknowledge purchase orders, send advance ship notices and submit invoices that match against your ERP. Portals connect to NetSuite, Dynamics 365 or SAP through APIs or EDI, with verified bank detail changes and an audit log on every update.
A supplier portal gives buyers, receiving and accounts payable one shared record of every purchase order, shipment and payment status, in place of scattered email threads.
Suppliers upload tax forms, insurance certificates and banking details once, and Tepia routes each item to the right reviewer before activation.
Read: Partner and Dealer Portal Development
Submitted invoices are checked against the PO and the receipt, and suppliers can see whether each line matched or is held for review.
Read: ERP Integration Services
Tepia lets suppliers confirm, split or flag each purchase order line, so buyers see backorders and date changes before trucks run late.
Read: AI Accounts Payable Automation
Bank account changes trigger a hold, a callback and a second approver, which Tepia builds in to stop payment redirection fraud.
Industry figures Tepia plans around when scoping supplier portal work.
The 2026 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey found 76 percent of organizations faced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2025.
Microsoft has reported that multifactor authentication can block over 99.9 percent of account compromise attacks.
Pew Research Center reports 91 percent of US adults own a smartphone, so supplier reps and drivers check status on the road.
Ask a buyer, a receiving lead and an AP clerk how they work with suppliers and you will hear about three separate inboxes. Purchase orders go out as PDFs, confirmations come back as replies that may or may not mention a changed ship date, insurance certificates sit in a shared folder until one quietly expires, and suppliers call AP every week to ask whether a document was received. Tepia starts a vendor portal project by mapping those threads, because each one becomes a screen with a clear owner.
The edge cases decide whether the portal gets used. A supplier ships 80 of 100 units and backorders the rest. A distributor substitutes an equivalent part number. One vendor has four remit to addresses and a factoring company that collects on its behalf. A drop shipper sends goods straight to your customer, so your dock never sees the box. Tepia designs the purchase order, shipment and payables records so each of these has a defined path rather than a workaround.
Compliance adds a second layer. Food and pharmaceutical buyers track certifications and audit results, construction firms track insurance and lien waivers, and most companies need a current W-9 before the first payment. The portal should know which documents each supplier category needs and when each one expires.
Tepia sizes the feature set to the way your purchasing team actually buys. A manufacturer sourcing components and a distributor buying finished goods need different screens, but most supplier portals include:
| Feature | Who uses it | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Self registration with tax form, insurance and banking upload | New suppliers and vendor management | Replaces onboarding packets traded back and forth by email |
| Document expiry tracking with reminders | Compliance and procurement | Flags lapsed insurance or certifications before an order is placed |
| Purchase order inbox with line level acknowledgment | Supplier sales and customer service reps | Turns silent POs into confirmed dates and quantities |
| Advance ship notices with carton and tracking detail | Supplier shipping teams and your receiving dock | Lets receiving plan labor and match boxes to POs on arrival |
| Invoice submission against open PO lines | Supplier billing staff | Cuts keying errors and starts matching the moment a document arrives |
| Payment status and remittance detail | Supplier finance teams | Ends the weekly status call to AP |
| Scorecards for on time delivery, fill rate and quality holds | Buyers and suppliers | Gives both sides the same numbers before a business review |
Tepia also builds bid requests for companies that source competitively, letting buyers send a specification to several approved suppliers and compare responses side by side. For dealers and resellers who sell your products rather than supply them, our partner and dealer portal work is the closer fit.
The portal is only useful if purchase orders flow out of your ERP automatically and confirmations flow back in. Tepia connects to NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Sage Intacct, Acumatica or QuickBooks through their APIs, so a PO approved in the ERP appears in the supplier’s inbox within minutes and an acknowledged date updates the expected receipt.
Large suppliers often trade through EDI already, using X12 transactions such as the 850 purchase order, 855 acknowledgment, 856 ship notice and 810 invoice. Tepia keeps that channel running and shows EDI and web documents in one timeline, so smaller suppliers get a browser while larger ones keep their automated feeds. For suppliers who still email PDFs, the portal can read those files with AI document processing and present extracted lines for a person to confirm.
On the payables side, matched documents post to the ERP as approved bills, and each payment run writes remittance details back to the portal. Our ERP integration services team owns the sync rules, error queues and reconciliation reports.
Supplier portals are a target because they control where payments go. The most common attack is simple: someone impersonating a supplier asks to change the bank account on file, and the next payment lands with a criminal. Tepia treats every banking change as a high risk event. The new details are held, the supplier is contacted through a phone number already on file rather than one supplied in the request, and a second internal approver signs off before the change takes effect.
Tepia follows SOC 2 aligned practices on logging and access reviews, which shortens the conversation when auditors ask how supplier data is controlled. See our security and compliance work for more.
Every supplier portal follows Tepia’s six phase process, run by a US based project manager who coordinates your buyers, AP team and a sample of suppliers.
Typically Discovery takes 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and rollout about a month before most suppliers are active. Details are on our process page.
Large procurement suites and the supplier modules inside major ERPs are strong choices when you buy indirect goods at scale, your suppliers already use those networks, and your process matches the suite’s defaults. Tepia will recommend them when that is the case.
A custom portal fits better when:
A hybrid also works: keep the ERP as the system of record and build only the supplier facing layer on its API. Compare options in build or buy software, review our work, or talk to Tepia about your supplier base.
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CEO
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VP & Operations Manager
