my customer does not have a portal and wants the completed questionnaire back by email

Email does not replace the portal, only the input screen

The fact that a customer has no portal and wants the list back by email does not change how you fill it in. You still work from one supply chain file with fixed answers — the statutory name, the trade register number, the number of employees, the certification status — and convert it into the format that this customer has sent by email. The only difference is the delivery method: no upload button with a third party, but an attachment that you send yourself.

This makes the confidentiality button more important, not less important. With a portal, only that one customer sees the answer that comes in there. With an email, the complete, filled-in list is in your Sent items and in the inbox of the recipient as a file — including every field you had accidentally left standing. So check per question what you send along, especially for fields such as turnover by country or internal process descriptions, before the file goes out. We do not determine what you should share; that remains your assessment per customer.

Why the supply chain file remains leading, not the format

The Trade Register Act 2007 establishes which basic data of an enterprise are officially registered — name, number, address, locations. These are facts that do not change depending on whether the customer uses a portal, an Excel format or a simple email with questions. The same logic applies to the other source fields in the file: an answer about the sector or about ISO 9001 certification is true or not true, regardless of the channel through which it reaches the customer. The format of the questionnaire only determines the form of the answer, not the content — and that content is already fixed in the file, ready to be put into any desired format.