Getting Your Vendors Working

Where this fits: Workflow Universe \| For: Operations Lead, Admin
Read first: Running your Vendor Network	Read next: Setting Up Your Vendor Account · Your First Week on UtilizeCore

Applies to: Operations leads, Vendor managers, and the leader who owns a Vendor rollout | Web

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The one rule. Registered is not the finish line. A Vendor counts once they are transacting in the platform. Measure two numbers weekly: the share of invited Vendors who reach Working, and the days it takes them.

Six stages, and who moves each one.

When a Vendor stalls, the stage tells you what is missing. Teams differ by company on both sides, so put a name against each owner.

#	Stage	It moves when	Suggested owner
1	Invited	You send the invite. Address and email are required; edit the message first.	Your admin
2	Registered	The Vendor accepts and completes the company profile.	The Vendor. The automated sequence drives it.
3	Compliant	Insurance and any other required documents are uploaded, then approved by you.	You approve. The most common stall.
4	Equipped	Every field user has their own login, not a shared one, with location services on.	The Vendor's office, if you ask
5	Working	A real Trip is checked in on Site, the work captured, and the Trip checked out.	The Vendor's crew, once you dispatch
6	Transacting	The invoice is generated from completed work in the Portal, not emailed to your AP inbox.	The Vendor's office, plus your AP policy

Stages, not statuses. These are rollout stages, not platform statuses. A Vendor can read Active and Signed Up in Network › Vendors and still be at Registered here, with no Trip ever worked.

One owner before you start. One named person owns Vendor activation as a number they report weekly. Not a shared inbox, not the automation, not the team. Without an owner, stages 4 to 6 do not happen.

Sort the network before you invite.

A small group of Vendors carries most of your Work Order volume. Onboard them by hand and let the automation handle the rest.

Pull every Vendor you dispatched in the last 12 months, with their Work Order count.
Sort by volume, highest first. The top 20 percent is Tier A.
Mark every Vendor with no Work Orders in 12 months. Do not onboard them. Retire them.
For Tier A, add the name, mobile number and email of the person who runs the crews, not just the AP contact.
Confirm every email on file is monitored. A dead address is the quietest failure in the whole process.

Tier	Who	How you onboard them	Effort
Tier A	Top 20 percent by volume	Call before the invite goes out. Walk the office through the Portal live, get the crew on the app during the call, and confirm insurance is current before you send anything.	Live call, 30 to 45 minutes
Tier B	Regular, lower volume	Invite with a personal note from their usual dispatcher. One human follow-up if they have not registered by day 7.	Email plus one call if stalled
Tier C	Occasional or seasonal	Invite and let the automated sequence work. They activate when you send them their next job.	Automated only
Retire	No work in 12 months	Do not invite. Every dormant Vendor you onboard hides the ones that matter in your reporting.	None

Two people, two jobs. The person who accepts your invite is usually the owner or the office. The person who has to use the app is a crew lead who never sees that email. On Tier A calls, get the crew lead's name and number and send them The Field Guide directly.

Three waves, one cutover date.

The waves stagger the work, not the deadline. Every wave targets the same date. Moving the date for a slow wave tells the whole network the date is negotiable.

Wave	What you do	Starts
Wave 1 · Tier A	Call each Vendor before the invite. Walk the office through setup, get the crew installed on the call, confirm insurance first. Watch the compliance queue in real time and note every question asked twice.	21 days before cutover
Wave 2 · Tier B	Invite with a personal note from their usual dispatcher, using what wave 1 taught you. One human follow-up if they have not registered by day 7.	14 days before cutover
Wave 3 · Tier C	Invite and let the automated sequence run. No calls.	14 days before cutover

The lever. The date you stop dispatching outside the platform changes behavior. Reminders do not. Until you stop dispatching by phone, every Vendor correctly concludes the platform is optional. Do not start wave 2 until wave 1 Vendors are Working, not just registered.

When	What happens	Who
Day −30	Announce the date to the whole network in a letter from your leadership, not a system address: the date, what changes, what stays the same.	Your leadership
Day −21	Tier A calls: the Portal walkthrough, insurance confirmed, crew installed.	Activation owner
Day −14	Invites go to Tier B and Tier C. The automated sequence starts on its own.	Your admin
Day −7	A reminder to anyone not yet registered, naming the date and what they will stop receiving.	Their dispatcher
Day 0	Scheduled work is dispatched only through the platform. Exceptions need the named approver.	Dispatch
Day +7	Review every exception granted and every Work Order logged after the fact. Fix the cause.	Activation owner

Write the exceptions policy first. Emergency work still goes out by phone and is logged after; scheduled work waits. Name one approver senior enough to say no to a dispatcher under pressure, and cap how many exceptions they can grant. Then count Work Orders created after the fact in the first two weeks. That number tells you whether the cutover is real.

The automation covers one stage of six.

Every invited Vendor enters an email and text sequence that runs until they register, or for up to 21 days if they never do. Once they register, no automated message reaches them again. Every stage after Registered is yours.

When	What the Vendor receives
Day 1	The invitation email and a text message, both with the link to set up their profile.
Days 2 to 7	Three follow-up emails on why the platform is worth their time, and a second text at the end of the first week.
Days 10 to 21	Reminders on a spaced cadence, but only if Work Orders are waiting for them. A Vendor with no assigned work drops out after day 7.
The day they register	Everything stops.

What you do while it runs.

When	Your move
Day 1	Confirm the invite reached a monitored address. Bounced and unopened invites are the largest silent loss in week one.
Day 2	Call Tier A. Do not wait for the sequence on your most important Vendors.
Day 3	Check the compliance queue and approve what has come in. A Vendor who uploaded and heard nothing assumes it is broken.
Day 5	Send The Field Guide to the crew lead, not just the office contact.
Day 7	Assign a real Work Order to every registered Vendor. Nothing drives adoption like a job with money attached.
Day 10	Call anyone in Tier A or B still unregistered. Ten days of silence is a decision, not a delay.

Clear compliance, or lose them there.

A Vendor stuck at compliance has already accepted, registered and uploaded. Losing them at the approval step is the most expensive failure in the funnel. Set it up once.

Go to Network › Vendors, open the Vendor, and find the Compliance section.
Decide the approval model: auto approval if you accept documents on upload, or off if a person reviews every certificate.
If it is off, name the person who checks the queue and how often: daily during a cutover, weekly after.
Use Override As Compliant only for a documented exception, and record why. It is a bypass, not a shortcut.
Set a recurring review of documents near expiry. An expired certificate silently removes a working Vendor from dispatch.

Where it breaks	What it looks like	The fix
Nobody watches the queue	A certificate is uploaded and waits. Nothing is approved, nobody is notified.	A named owner, checked daily during cutover.
Requirements never stated	The wrong document or wrong limits, twice, then the Vendor gives up.	Send the exact requirements with the invite: documents, limits, whose name goes on the certificate.
Silent expiry	A working Vendor drops out of dispatch mid-season.	An expiry review on a fixed cadence.
Override becomes the norm	Within a quarter nobody knows who is actually covered.	One approver, every use logged.

Diagnose before you chase.

Why they stalled	What to do
They never saw it	Wrong address, wrong person, or the invite went to accounts payable and stopped. Fix the contact and resend.
They see no point	No Work Order is waiting for them. Assign one, then call.
They started and got stuck	Usually compliance, sometimes login. Solve it on the phone, not by email.
They are refusing	A small number will not adopt. That is a business decision about the Vendor, not an onboarding problem.

The escalation ladder.

Trigger	Action
Day 7, not registered	A personal email from their usual dispatcher, replying on a recent job thread so it lands in a familiar conversation.
Day 14, not registered	A phone call. Confirm the person and the email, and find out which of the four reasons applies.
Day 7, registered, not compliant	Send the exact document requirements and offer to review a draft certificate before they submit it.
Day 14, compliant, no Trip worked	The crew does not have the app. Get the crew lead's number and send them The Field Guide directly.
Day 21, still not working	Written notice naming the cutover date and the work they will stop receiving. Copy their account owner on your side.
Day 30, still not working	Decide: replace them, hold them for emergency work only, or accept the exception in writing with a review date.

What to say on the call. “We are moving all scheduled work to the portal on [date]. It takes about ten minutes to set up, it is free for you, and it gets your invoices paid faster because the work and the paperwork arrive together. Can I walk you through it now?”

Read next. Running your Vendor Network for the setup moves and the daily work. Send Vendors Setting Up Your Vendor Account and Your First Week on UtilizeCore.

Questions? Contact your Customer Success team or email support@utilizecore.com.