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Supplier Scorecard

SUPPLY
SUPPLIERS
COST
ECOMMERCE

Works with the AI tools you already use

+19 agents

Supplier review for ecommerce teams: rank each one on what their lead times and defects actually cost you, then flag who to renegotiate.

ABOUT WHAT IT DOES USE CASES EXAMPLE INSTALL

Suppliers get compared on unit price, which is the one number on the invoice and the smallest part of what they cost. A supplier three percent cheaper whose lead time varies by three weeks forces you to hold more safety stock, and one with a two percent defect rate costs you the replacements, the returns and the customers who got the bad units. Those costs land in inventory, in support and in retention, never in the procurement conversation. This skill ranks suppliers on what they actually cost you and flags who to renegotiate.

What It Does

Computes total cost per supplier including the buffer their variance forces.
Reads lead time reliability from completed orders, not contract terms.
Prices defects through replacement, support time and lost customers.
Separates a supplier that is slow from one that is unpredictable.
Sizes what a renegotiation on each term would actually be worth.
Ranks suppliers and flags who to renegotiate, with the number to open on.

Use Cases

Compare suppliers on total cost rather than on unit price.
Walk into a renegotiation with the cost of their lead time variance.
Find the cheap supplier whose defect rate makes them expensive.
Know which term to push on with each supplier.

Example Session

Which suppliers should we renegotiate with, and on what?

Your cheapest supplier is your most expensive. Open on lead time, not price.

Supplier | Unit price | Lead time range | Defects | Buffer cost | Total vs best
Supplier A | $9.10 | 45-64 days | 2.1% | $44,000 | +$71,000
Supplier B | $9.40 | 52-58 days | 0.4% | $12,000 | Baseline
Supplier C | $10.20 | 38-42 days | 0.3% | $6,000 | +$18,000
Supplier D | $9.80 | 60-71 days | 0.9% | $21,000 | +$29,000

Supplier A is thirty cents cheaper per unit and costs $71,000 more a year once you count the safety stock their nineteen day range forces and their defect rate. The renegotiation to have is about lead time consistency rather than price: getting their range to ten days is worth more than a fifty cent price cut, and is usually easier for them to give.

Why This Beats Prompting It Yourself

Unit Price vs Total Cost Of The Relationship: The Hidden Risk

A generic prompt compares unit prices and terms, which is the procurement conversation as it is normally held. Thirty cents a unit is visible and the $44,000 of safety stock their unpredictability forces is not, because it sits in an inventory balance nobody attributes to a supplier. The cheapest quote regularly wins a contract it should lose.

When You Still Need To Know Which Term To Ask For

Most renegotiations open on price because price is what everyone knows how to discuss. Supplier A's consistency is worth more than their price, and narrowing a lead time range is often easier for a supplier to concede than a discount. Knowing which lever to pull is most of the negotiation.

Known Limitations

Buffer cost attribution assumes the safety stock you hold is the safety stock that supplier's variance requires, which is true when levels are set correctly and overstated when they are not. Defect costs use your own return and support data where attributable and a conservative default where not. It produces the scorecard and does not contact suppliers or change terms.

Install It

Download the ZIP.
It is free and there is no account to create.
Unzip it into your agent's skills folder.
Claude Code reads ~/.claude/skills/, which is hidden by default: the command in the folder block opens it. Other agents scan their own directory, so drop the same folder there instead.
Ask your agent to use it.
Restart the agent if it was already running, then it picks the skill up with no config.

skills folder

Copy

~/.claude/skills/supplier-scorecard/
  SKILL.md
  references/supplier-costs.md
  scorecards/
  # one file per review, with the total cost

# macOS: create the folder and open it in Finder
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && open ~/.claude/skills

# Windows: paste in the Explorer address bar
%USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from a supplier scorecard template?

A template collects ratings on categories. This computes the cost of each supplier's behavior in dollars, including the safety stock their variance forces you to hold, which is the largest hidden item and never appears on a template.

Which agents does the skill run in?

Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision.

What does it need connected to work?

Purchase orders with real receipt dates, unit costs, returns and defects attributable to production batches, and your safety stock levels. Support tickets linked to products sharpen the defect cost.

Why is lead time variance so expensive?

Because it is absorbed by safety stock, and safety stock is cash. A supplier with a nineteen day range forces you to hold weeks of extra inventory across everything they make, which is a standing cost that never appears on their invoice.

Is it fair to charge a supplier for defects?

The scorecard is for your decision-making rather than for billing them. Whether you raise it in a negotiation is your call, and having the number is what makes that conversation possible at all.

What is included with the skill?

The skill itself, the supplier cost reference, the scorecard format, and the negotiation prompts. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the model changes, so download it again if your rankings start shifting.

Other skills

Pricing Analyst

Sets the price floor, reads elasticity across the catalog, and writes the pricing tests and discount changes worth running next.

Discount Ladder

Decides the next markdown step instead of guessing at 20%: increases, holds, or pulls the discount back.

Out of Stock

Flags the SKUs about to run dry, updates the ship-date promise, and queues the actions to pause Paid on them.

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