What should I put in a BOM when I send it out for quoting?
Reviewed · ICBOMS sourcing desk, Shenzhen
Send the manufacturer part number complete with its suffix, the quantity you need, and the reference designator. The suffix is not optional: on the same base part it encodes package, temperature grade and revision, and a quote for the wrong variant is worse than no quote, because it costs a round trip to discover. If the suffix is uncertain, say so — a sourcing desk can resolve the variant, but only if it knows the question exists.
The fields that make a quote usable
- Manufacturer part number, complete — including the ordering suffix rather than the base number.
- Manufacturer, when the part number is ambiguous across vendors.
- Quantity needed, and the quantity you would accept as a partial (some obsolete lines exist only in smaller quantity than you asked for).
- Reference designator, so a substitute can be checked against where the part actually sits.
- Any deadline the part is on the critical path for — it changes which route is worth searching first.
What you can leave out
You do not need to provide prices, distributor names or a preferred supplier list. You do not need to sanitise the BOM: removing context makes it harder to spot that two lines are the same part in different packages, or that one line has an obvious cross-reference already in the file. If there are lines that must not be substituted, marking them is more useful than deleting them.
What a usable quote looks like coming back
A quote that can be acted on states, per line: what was found, its condition, and — where the part is obsolete or scarce — what specific stock it refers to. It should say which lines could not be matched to their datasheet rather than quietly omitting them, and where a cross-reference exists, which parameters were matched and which were not.
Beware of the quote that answers every line at once with a single lead time. On mixed BOMs the honest picture is per line, because a commodity part and a discontinued one do not share a supply situation.
Small quantities
If the build is small, say so up front along with the total. Mixed small-quantity BOMs are normally consolidated into one shipment, and knowing the whole list lets a supplier plan the packing; sending lines one at a time multiplies the fixed cost of handling and shows up in what you are quoted.
Put this to work on your list
Send the part numbers or the whole BOM. Each line comes back with what can be sourced, its condition, and the cross-references where they exist — then the lines ship together.