The "Quote & Buy" button initiates either a quote or a purchase of a specific part
A "Spot Quote" is a request for Cofactr to send a request for quote (RFQ), which Cofactr calls a "New Sourcing Request" to a specific distributor. This button is available on any individual part's page, as seen on the right side of the screen here:
Clicking on the "Quote & Buy" button will do one of two things, depending on the availability of the part. If the par is immediately buyable you'll see a "Spot Buy" option appear. If the part needs to be quoted it will provide a "New Sourcing Request".
Spot Buy
A "Spot Buy" is a request to Cofactr to acquire a specific number of parts on your behalf. When a part can be purchased immediately this dialogue will pop up that looks like this:
The Spot Buy will ask you to enter a part Quantity. This is the number of parts you are looking to purchase. As soon as you enter a number in Cofactr will search across all distributors, considering their parts price, shipping, and any potential customs costs, and produce the best price possible on the parts at various lead times. For example, here are results for a quantity of 50 of ATTINY12L-4PU:
In this case if I needed 50 parts the best possible sourcing strategy would be to purchase 50 pieces from Mouser.
To move forward with the purchase click the 'Submit Order" button.
A new window, "Confirm Order" appears above the Spot Buy dialogue. This may take a moment as Cofactr is again referencing current supply chain conditions to assure that the best sourcing strategy is applied. Because of this it is possible that the summary could change, as market conditions are fluid. In most cases you will see the same summary of sourcing info. The "Conform Order" window looks like this:
Clicking on the "Confirm (total cost) Order", which will dynamically fill the total cost of the purchase, will then initiate the purchase by Cofactr and you'll then see an "Order Confirmed" pop up. It looks like this:
Now the Spot Buy is complete and the parts are on the way!
A Spot Buy can also be initiated for a specific distributor by clicking the "Spot Buy" button which will appear on the right as a small 'buying clipboard' icon in a distributor row in a parts supplier view. It will look like this:
The dialogue that appears will now have an "Approved Supplier" listed like this:
This now limits the purchasable distributor to Digi-Key only, and therefore the pricing optimizer will only consider Digi-Key, or any other listed distributors added to the "Approved Suppliers", when calculating and optimizing sourcing.