First, you will see I am using almost indifferently vendor and supplier. If you want to what is the difference between vendor and supplier, go here.
Second, this post is not academic, but based on a real-life Excel template. You’ll learn about my vendor scorecard excel template. It helps you to build a vendor scoring system from scratch, as a stand-alone solution. No database needed.
Third, this supplier performance scorecard template has a big brother with an Excel database. Pick-up the one that best suits your needs!
How does a vendor performance scorecard template look like?

Where to download the template:
Go directly at the bottom section of this article.
Some context of this supplier rating system in Excel:
Some years ago, I would have sold my kingdom to get a ready to use supplier monitoring scorecard. I searched the web for hours. Oh, I found nice pictures and consultants matrix. But nothing I could need in my real work:

- Short and impactful
- Intuitive to use
- Easy to share
So we sat down together with my team, and listed what we wanted to see on a vendor performance tracking system scorecard. It means all KPIs and criteria that measure a vendor.
How-to create a list of criteria and KPIs you need:
Let’s have a look at the necessary 5 steps on how to create scorecard in excel.
First define your targets.
Answer questions such as “why am I doing this” “when will I use it” “who is going to prepare it” “Who is going to read it” “What is the outcome”. Look further below to get some support on this.
Real-life tip: You need to already seek alignment in this phase and buy-in from stakeholders. If you are to create a new tool, or even a new way of working. This is necessary to inform decision-makers about your approach to get support for later use and implementation. Do not underestimate this part. A good way to get buy-in, is to ask for input on target definition. Once someone as set a target of a project, he feels compelled to its success.
Second is brainstorming.
List all you want, all your colleagues dream of. No limit to listing. This comes later. Go broad with your colleagues: accounting, quality, transport, Key Account,… Now you have a first draft list of vendor scorecard criteria. For brainstorming, you can use usual collaborative tools (White board, Miro,…)
Third is definition.
Align on wording. What is spend? Yearly spend? Net?… What is price? Bulk price? Unit?… The devil is in details, and better to kick him out early enough.
Important: check that the KPIs is existing in a way in your organization. If not, how to you intend to retrieve those in a regular way?
Fourth is trimming.
Cut off anything which is really complex to retrieve in your organization. Suppress nice-to-have that just over complexify the whole picture with low added value.
Real-life tip: this is the most emotional part. You want to keep all. To see all and everything. This is wrong. More is not better. Allocate for instance 5 KPIs per area and stick to it.
Next is validate.
Check with your peers and organization that you get alignment on your tool. Do not jump this stage. This is were all the work can be lost and stopped.
How to create scorecard in Excel? How to create your vendor scorecard dashboard? No worries, I did it for you…
Decide what you want graphically, what is better as a KPIs. And then comes the how. I believe in such phases in 2 tools. Excel and PowerBI. Now why did I focus on Excel?
- Excel is better-off as a start, you may always upgrade later. The link between the 2 MS-office applications is strong
- PowerBI is better used when dealing a lot of data. In this Excel vendor scorecard template, we built a stand-alone application. No database in background.
But anyway, since I did the job for you with my vendor evaluation template in Excel, you will skip this step. And just adapt my criteria to your own needs. Thanks to steps 1 to 5.
The result of our work: a comprehensive vendor performance tracking system
You surely saw many fancy screenshots of what a supplier performance card is made of. There is no single truth indeed. Nonetheless, there is a common recipe:
- One-pager
- Mixing graphics and KPIs
- Clearly vendor related and sharable
The most important is readability and comprehensiveness. Based on this recipe I have designed a vendor performance scorecard template in Excel. The criteria are grouped per category. Those can be figures, text or graphics. The criteria are as objective as possible. Vendor and own organization must accept and recognize those.
The big brother:
This scorecard vendor tracking template is the “light version”, i.e. without database in the background, of following supplier scorecard template.
Why a scorecard to measure vendor performance?
A Vendor scorecard is a 360° approach of a vendor benchmark. It streamlines the gathering of indicators across procurement, quality, finance, risk management and supply chain. This is a true supplier rating in Excel.
The vendor score card template gathers all criteria about vendor performance. It can be adapted any time.
What is the value of a performance scorecard to benchmark vendors?
Let me make a simple test. I will ask you 5 questions. If you have ever heard one of those and thought: “hmm, ‘d better know this”, then you already know the value of a vendor score card.
- Tell me your worst vendor.
- Scrub your vendor base and suppress xxx vendors. Which one do you suppress?
- VIP client has reached your CEO to complain about the vendor. Your CEO tells you: give me an overview for today EOB.
- Did this vendor improved since last year.
- Which vendor do you want to propose for vendor of the year award.
Then you know why you need a scorecard xls template for vendors!
By deploying a vendor scoring approach in xls format, I successfully:
- Prepare negotiation (spend, quality,…): a comprehensive approach of your vendor on one page. A strong support to manage discussions. Use facts to back-up your decisions.
- Save time in benchmarking relevant vendors: a full view on all aspects of your vendors, from business to risks analyzis.
- Get more traction internally with strong visual documents. Become the internal benchmark in procurement department.