This article shows you how to respond when a buyer opens a price negotiation on your submitted response in the Strategic Sourcing portal: where the negotiation appears, how to read the target prices, how to answer item by item, and what the buyer's decisions mean. A negotiation is a follow-up the buyer starts after you submit, asking you to improve prices on specific line items. It never changes your response unless you agree to it.
How do I know the buyer started a negotiation?
To spot a new negotiation, watch for three signals. First, you receive an email stating that a negotiation was created for the event, covering a stated number of line items, with a button linking straight to the negotiation. Second, your notifications inbox shows a Negotiation Request entry. Third, the event overview displays an orange alert titled Price Negotiation Pending (The buyer has requested price adjustments on [N] items. Please review and respond.) with a Review & Respond button, and a Negotiation Requests card listing each pending request with its Action Required badge, response deadline (Respond by [date]), and, when shared, the targeted reduction amount.
What does the negotiation page show?
To review the buyer's request, click Review & Respond. The Price Negotiation Response page opens at /supplier/sourcing-project/[event-id]/negotiate/[negotiation-id]. The header shows the Response Deadline with a live countdown (it turns red when under 3 days). Below it you may find a Message from Buyer card with the buyer's note explaining the request. Six summary cards track your progress as you answer: Items for Review (total), Accepted, Countered, Rejected, Pending, and Avg Reduction (the average price reduction your current answers represent).
How do I read the price grid?
To compare the buyer's ask against your submitted prices, use the grid at the bottom of the page. Items are grouped by lot; each line item shows, per pricing column, Your Price (the price from your submitted response, labeled Old), the buyer's Target price, the Gap between the two, and, when the buyer chose to share it, your Rank among suppliers, such as #2 of 5. Some prices have no target and are marked Open to offers: the buyer wants a better price but lets you propose it, so those items can only be answered with a counter offer.
How do I respond to each item?
To answer the negotiation, give every price in the grid exactly one of three responses:
Accept Target: click the green check on the price. You agree to supply at the buyer's target price.
Counter Offer: click the target cell and type your counter price. The counter must be greater than 0 and cannot exceed your original price; the exact validation messages are Please enter a counter price, Counter price must be greater than 0, and Counter price cannot exceed your original price.
Reject: click the red cross. You keep your original submitted price for that item.
To answer many items at once, use the bulk buttons above the grid: Accept All and Reject All set every price that has a buyer target (once some prices are already answered, the buttons become Accept Remaining and Reject Remaining). Prices marked Open to offers are excluded from bulk actions because they require a typed counter. Reset clears all your answers back to the saved state.
How do I submit my negotiation response?
To send your answers to the buyer, complete every item and submit before the deadline:
Check the summary cards: Pending must be 0. The Submit Response button stays disabled until every price has an answer, and also after the deadline passes.
Click Submit Response in the top-right corner.
The Submit Negotiation Response dialog summarizes your accepted, countered, and rejected counts. If you rejected everything, a warning explains that the buyer will be notified you cannot meet any targets.
Click Submit Response in the dialog to confirm. You see Negotiation response submitted successfully! and return to the event page.
A negotiation response is final: after submitting, the page shows Response Submitted (Your negotiation response has been submitted and is awaiting buyer approval) and the overview card changes to Awaiting Buyer Review with a View Response button. If the deadline passes before you submit, the page shows Deadline Passed and you can no longer respond.
What does the buyer decide?
To learn the outcome, wait for the buyer's per-item decisions. For each price you answered, the buyer marks it Accepted (your accepted target or counter offer becomes the agreed price) or Rejected. When rejecting, the buyer either keeps your original submitted price or chooses to renegotiate the item. You receive an email summarizing the result ([X] of [Y] item(s) were accepted) with a View Details link, plus a Negotiation Decision notification in the portal. The negotiation then moves through its lifecycle: Sent (waiting for you) → Responded (waiting for the buyer) → Closed (decided).
Can there be follow-up negotiation rounds?
To handle continued bargaining, expect that the buyer may open a follow-up negotiation on items that were not settled. It arrives exactly like the first one: a new email, a new Price Negotiation Pending alert, and a new entry in the Negotiation Requests card, linked to the previous negotiation. Respond to each follow-up the same way, item by item, before its own deadline. Reminder emails are sent when a negotiation deadline approaches, stating the hours remaining.