A supplier scorecard is a way of turning an argument into a number. Two suppliers in the same category, one cheaper and one more reliable, and a decision about which to consolidate onto. Most published scorecards fail for a small business because they carry twenty criteria and a scoring rubric nobody will apply twice. This page is about building one that gets used: how many criteria, how to set the weights before you look at the scores, and what a comparison actually tells you. The free vendor scorecard on this site does the arithmetic from your own weights and scores.
Four to six criteria, no more
For a small business comparing two suppliers it already uses, four to six criteria is the working range. Price is one of them and never the only one. The others come from what actually goes wrong with this category: for a parts supplier, lead time and defect rate; for a services supplier, responsiveness and whether the work needs redoing; for anything on site, insurance and safety. A scorecard with twenty criteria is not more rigorous, it is a scorecard that gets filled in once, because the marginal criteria are the ones nobody has evidence for and they dilute the ones you do.
Set the weights before you look at the scores
This is the single discipline that makes a scorecard honest. Decide what matters and by how much while you are thinking about the category rather than about the two names, and write the weights down. Then score. Setting weights afterwards, even with good intentions, is choosing the answer and reverse engineering the method, and everyone in the room will know. If you cannot agree the weights before scoring, the disagreement is about what the company wants from the category, which is a more useful thing to have surfaced than a number.
What supplier scorecard examples usually get wrong
Published examples tend to score suppliers against an absolute standard, which needs a benchmark nobody has. A small business does not know what a good defect rate is for its category and should not pretend to. Score the two suppliers relative to each other on the same scale, which is a comparison you can actually make from your own experience, and let the weights carry the judgement about what matters. That is what the worksheet on this site does, and it is why it publishes no benchmark: the only rate it knows is the one you enter.
What the comparison decides, and what it does not
A scorecard says which supplier scores better on the things you said mattered, at the weights you set. That is genuinely useful for consolidation, for a renewal conversation, and for a decision somebody has to defend later. It does not say whether to keep both, because that depends on concentration risk the scorecard does not measure, and it does not say the loser is bad. Re-score annually rather than once, since the value is in the movement: a supplier sliding on responsiveness over three cycles is a finding no single scorecard produces.
Questions people ask about supplier scorecard
How many criteria should a supplier scorecard have?
Four to six for a small business. Price plus whatever actually goes wrong in that category. Twenty criteria produces a scorecard that is filled in once and never again.
Should weights be set before or after scoring?
Before, always, and written down. Setting them afterwards is choosing the answer and working back to it, and everyone in the room will be able to tell.
Can a scorecard compare a supplier against an industry standard?
Not usefully for a small business, because that needs a benchmark you do not hold. Score two suppliers you already use against each other on the same scale and let the weights carry what matters.
How often should suppliers be scored?
Annually, or at renewal. The value is in the movement between cycles rather than in any single score, which is why the record keeps scorecards over time rather than replacing them.