Set up suppliers to track

Every savings comparison needs a market to compare against — suppliers are that market.

What you get

• A benchmark set of suppliers every check compares your incumbent costs against.
• Savings recommendations in the Savings Center that name the supplier behind the suggestion.
• index_drift and cost-increase alerts on Alerts as soon as a tracked supplier's pricing moves against you.

Adding a supplier

1. Go to Settings → Sources.
2. Add each supplier you want checks to benchmark against — a name and a listing-page URL per supplier.
3. Mark your incumbent supplier for each purchase item (on the item itself, or via the incumbent_supplier column on CSV import) so a check knows which price is the one it's comparing against.
4. Save. The supplier is included starting with the next check, scheduled or manual.

Start with the suppliers that actually compete for your business rather than every vendor you've ever bought from — each one counts against your plan's source cap, and a benchmark set that's too broad makes savings comparisons noisier, not better.

Tips

• Settings → Usage shows current source usage against your plan tier — check it before a bulk add.
• A supplier you remove stops being checked but past observations, alerts, and recommendations stay on Reports & history, so removing one doesn't erase what it already told you.
• If a supplier's page layout changes and a check starts missing prices, edit the supplier's URL rather than deleting and re-adding it — that keeps its history attached to the same record.
• Approved-suppliers lists on Buying guardrails narrow which of these suppliers a switch-supplier recommendation is allowed to suggest.

How to read a supplier's history

Each supplier keeps its own timeline of observed prices, visible from its detail page under Settings → Sources. A gap in that timeline usually means a check skipped the supplier (a temporarily unreachable page, for example) rather than a real price change — the Alerts feed only fires on a confirmed move, not a missed read.

Go further

• Import what you buy — the other half of what a check compares.
• Run a check & read a savings recommendation — how suppliers factor into a check.
• Set buying guardrails — approved-suppliers lists and other rules that gate what gets suggested.
• Track contract renewals — where your incumbent supplier shows up again.