Connecting your suppliers: overview
Your supplier knows whether an order is on hold, whether its ship date moved, and which cartons shipped. Your mailbox holds the conversation and the promises around that order. PromoStandards is the promotional products industry's set of web services that suppliers publish and distributors call, and connecting a supplier gives Scout a second source to compare with the evidence your workspace already lets it read.
Before you begin
Supplier connections are being brought online supplier by supplier. The screens and the checks described here are built and they behave exactly as written, but paid supplier access and the first live supplier proofs are still being completed. A preview marked as an example contains examples, not your supplier data. Ask Scout to confirm your workspace is approved for real connection before entering credentials or expecting scheduled reads. This article describes the connection journey and its limits; it is not an announcement that every supplier or every Watch is live.
You must be your workspace's Owner or an Admin to manage the connection. The Owner's authorization is what allows Scout to request supplier credentials on the distributor's behalf.
Never email a supplier password to Scout, and never paste one into an Inbox item, a support ticket or a chat. Credentials are only ever typed into the secure setup sheet described in Adding your own supplier account.
Why connect a supplier
Nothing in PromoStandards pushes. Every service is pull-only: there is no notification when an order goes on hold or a shipment leaves. Scout's supplier engine is that missing notification — it asks, compares the answer with what it saw last time, and raises a point when something changed. That can reveal an unanswered acknowledgment, a hold that needs your response, a production delay, stock that will not cover an order, or an invoice that differs from the purchase order. What Scout can support depends on which services answer, what evidence your workspace holds, and which Watches are enabled there; a supplier's name alone does not promise complete coverage.
Scout reads and prepares. You remain the person who contacts the customer or the supplier and takes the final action. Connecting PromoStandards does not authorize Scout to place or change purchase orders, send customer messages, or complete a transaction.
Where it lives
- Open Connections from your avatar menu.
- Choose PromoStandards.
It belongs to Connections, not to Workspace settings, and Back to Connections returns you.
Screenshot: PromoStandards Overview.
The three tabs
- Overview — your connected suppliers, which lane each one is on, and the current state of every service.
- Health — a day-by-day heartbeat per supplier over 14, 30 or 60 days, plus the open issues that need you.
- History — the recorded updates: what ran, when, for which supplier and service, and how it ended. Check here rather than assuming a connection check imported your orders. Both tabs are covered in Reading supplier Health and History.
A new workspace has no suppliers and no history, and says so — "Connect your first supplier." Scout does not fill an empty page with another company's data.
Reading Overview
The header states the boundary: Scout reads each supplier's PromoStandards services for this workspace · read-only, never writes. Three stat cards double as filters:
- LIVE — every published service answering.
- NEEDS ATTENTION — a service is rejecting credentials.
- WAITING ON SUPPLIER — shared feed only until credentials arrive. (If some services simply have not refreshed today, this card reads WAITING — awaiting credentials, verification or daily quota.)
Below them, filter chips — All, Live, Needs attention, Waiting — and two layouts: Matrix, a grid of the eight services against one column per supplier, and Cards, the same information one supplier at a time. Clicking a supplier opens a sheet with its eight services, what it unlocks, and its action — Check now, Update credentials, Ask for credentials or Resend request.
Each service cell carries one state: Answering, Shared feed · read-only, Needs your credentials, Failing, Watching (an isolated non-authorization problem, or waiting for more evidence), Not refreshed today, or Not published. Two buttons sit at the top: Add supplier, and What services are available?, which explains each of the eight services and what you get from it.
The eight services
| Service | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Product data | Style numbers, names, colors, sizes, decoration methods, imprint areas. |
| Media | Product photos, color swatches, spec sheets, logo placement art. |
| Pricing & config | Price grids by quantity, your discount, upcharges, setup and run charges, currency, effective dates. |
| Inventory | On-hand quantity by style, color and size, plus expected restock dates. |
| Purchase orders | Acknowledgments, line quantities, prices, requested ship dates. Scout reads the acknowledgment; it never sends purchase orders. |
| Order status | Stage, current ship date, any hold reason. |
| Shipments | Carrier, tracking numbers, cartons, ship date, delivery estimate per box. |
| Invoices | Invoice numbers, amounts, freight, terms, line differences against the purchase order. |
Two ways to connect
- Start on the shared feed — nothing to type, read-only. Catalogue information only: product data, media, inventory and list pricing, where the supplier publishes them. See Adding a supplier on the shared feed.
- Use your own account — the login the supplier issued you. This unlocks your order status, shipments, invoices and negotiated pricing. See Adding your own supplier account.
Shared catalogue data is not your negotiated pricing, private order status, shipment information or supplier invoices, and it does not establish that a customer order exists or has shipped. Some suppliers offer no shared feed at all, and Scout will say so.
Good to know
- The supplier list is not Scout's opinion. It is the list of suppliers wired through PSRESTful, the gateway Scout reads PromoStandards through. Your own purchase orders and vendor records only rank which suppliers to connect first — "seen in your purchase orders · not connected yet" — they never add a supplier to the list.
- Scout does not store your supplier password. It passes through the authorized setup step once and is cleared from the form.
- Purchase orders stay read-only. Scout will not place one, change one or cancel one.
- Supplier evidence is shared inside your workspace. It never makes a colleague's private mailbox evidence visible to you.
- A preview can demonstrate every step here. Only an approved live connection and its real recorded runs establish that your supplier is connected.