Symptom
You open a demand you were able to edit before, but the Edit demand button is nowhere to be found. Instead, a warning with a padlock icon appears at the top of the demand page:
The demand can no longer be edited once the first offer has arrived. You can cancel it or review the offers.
When the arrival time of the first offer is known, the same warning states it as well — for example: "The first offer arrived 2 hours ago — the demand can no longer be edited. You can cancel it or review the offers."
You will not find a route to editing in the My Demands list either: the ⋮ menu on the row of a Published demand never shows an Edit option. That option is listed only for Draft demands.
Reason — the lock rule
A demand can be edited only until the first offer arrives. The rule depends on the status of the demand and on the number of offers it has received:
- Draft demand: always editable. In the My Demands list, Continue picks up where you left off.
- Published with no offers yet: editable. On the demand page you see the Edit demand and Close demand buttons.
- Published with at least one offer: editing is locked. Edit demand and Close demand disappear; Cancel demand remains as the only action that changes the course of the demand.
- Closed, Cancelled and Completed demands: these are concluded demands and cannot be edited under any circumstances.
The lock looks at the number of offers, not at how long the demand has been published. Editing closes as soon as even a single offer arrives.
Why it works this way
Suppliers price against the terms they see: quantity, quality, delivery method, payment terms, delivery date. If those terms changed after offers had arrived, it would invalidate the offers already submitted and make your comparison meaningless. The lock guarantees that every offer you receive relates to the same, unchanged terms.
What to do
- Use the FAQ if a small clarification is needed. From the FAQ tab on the demand page, use Add Q&A to publish an entry. These entries are marked as Visible to suppliers, meaning your clarification reaches every supplier looking at the demand at the same time. For clarifications that do not change the terms, this is the fastest route.
- Write through Messages if a correction concerns a single supplier. From the Messages tab on the demand page you can correspond with the supplier in question. Because offers are sealed, other suppliers do not see this correspondence.
- Reissue the demand if the terms have changed substantially. On the demand page, choose Cancel demand. In the confirmation dialog, read the warning "This demand will be cancelled and suppliers can no longer submit offers. This cannot be undone." and confirm with Yes, cancel it. Then, in the My Demands list, use the Duplicate (new demand) option in the ⋮ menu of the relevant row: a new Draft is created with the same content, and you enter the current terms and publish it again. Product lines and the files you uploaded carry over to the copy; if your plan has changed in the meantime, only the fields covered by your current plan are copied.
Think carefully before choosing the third route. Cancellation cannot be undone; no new offer can be submitted on a cancelled demand, and the offers you already hold cannot be taken forward through it. Suppliers will have to offer on the new demand from scratch. If the change genuinely affects price, this is the right method; if it does not, the FAQ or Messages is enough.