Below are all updates made to Network Questions available to Graphite customers. If you're interested in adjusting your Workflows based on any changes, reach out to your Technical Account Manager.
Jan. 6, 2025
Update to Chinese, French and Intalian Tax Identification Numbers
Chinese tax ID numbers are now required to be 18 characters. String length & masking is also now available for French SIREN/SIRET. Additionally, string length and masking for Italian Tax IDs is now available based on whether it's an individual or company.
Dec. 4, 2024
New Health & Safety Questions
There are several new questions in the Health & Safety Topic. If you have admin privileges, you can review these new questions and work with your Technical Account Manager to add these to your onboarding flow.
Canadian Bank Account Number Update
Canadian bank account numbers now must be 7-12 digits. This is an improvement designed to ensure invalid numbers are not recorded.
French Suppliers Now Required to Give SIREN number
A French SIREN number consists of nine digits and is a unique identifier for a business entity in France. Any French supplier onboarding within Graphite will be asked to provide this number now.
Supplier Master Data Update: More Control of Insurance Table Records
Similar to the recent updates allowing suppliers to manage their bank accounts and which connections can see which account, suppliers now have the ability to explicitly control which insurance table records are shared with which customers.
New Tax Field for Non-Network Suppliers
A new field is being introduced that will make it easier for Graphite to control when tax fields are required for non-network suppliers, allowing customers to make exceptions for a single supplier or change a requirement entirely for non-network suppliers they want to do business with. This will be a new API field titled “Supplier_Nonnetwork_Require_Tax” with a label of "Require Tax Fields for Non-Network Suppliers".
Language Changes to Several Questions Regarding Sales Contacts
We are making several updates to questions regarding sales or partnership contacts to help clarify account-specific questions vs. overall sales contacts at the company.
- Contacts_General_Sales currently labeled “General Sales Contact” will now ask the supplier "Which contact should be listed as the general Sales contact?". This contact will be shared with all connected companies.
- Sales_Named_Account_Rep is currently labeled “Do you have an account manager at your company for {{{company name}}}?” will now read "Do you have a specific account manager at your company for {{{company name}}}?”
- Contacts_Account_Manager currently labeled “Account Manager” will now be "{{{customer}}} Account Manager"
- Contacts_General_Order currently labeled “General Order Contact” will now read as "Which contact should be listed as the general Order contact?" and be shared with all connections.
- Contacts_Named_Order currently labeled “Order Contact” will now be "{{{customer}}} Order Contact"
- Contacts_Payment_Remittance currently labeled “Payment / Remittance Contact” will now state "Which contact should be listed as the general Payment / Remittance contact?" and will be shared with all connections.
- Payment_Pricing_Alternate currently labeled "Is there someone else we should contact for payment questions?" will now read "Is there someone else {{{customer}}} should contact for payment questions?"
- Contacts_Payment_Pricing currently labeled "Payment Contact" will new be "{{{customer}}} Payment Contact"
Sept. 4, 2024
New Topics Now Available: ESG & AI
We’ve added two new Topics in the September release.
ESG Topic
A new Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Topic is now available in the Question Library. This new Topic combines a select set of questions from existing Topics – Environmental Sustainability, Workforce and Labor, Ethics and Integrity and Human Rights – to create a basic ESG questionnaire across those areas of focus.
Answers to the ESG questions that are shared with the other Topics will not need to be asked twice - the supplier answers will carry across to the other Topic.
AI Topic
A new topic on AI is now available to be added from the Question Library. This topic asks questions such as “Are AI capabilities present in the system, services, products provided or features and/or will your company (or sub-processors) be processing data with AI?”
Updates to Canadian Sales Tax Fields
We’ve separated out sales tax numbers to account for specific regional uses:
- The “Sales Tax Number (GST/HST or QST)” field will now just be called “Sales Tax Number (GST/HST)”
- We are adding two new fields for Canadian suppliers:
- Provincial Sales Tax (PST)
- Quebec Sales Tax (QST)
Update to VAT Question to Account for Groups
For UK suppliers who enter their VAT number, an additional question can be triggered asking "Is the VAT number being used part of a VAT group?"
August 7, 2024
Updated Bank & Tax Fields for Localization
A number of updates to the Network Questions were made to ensure local tax and bank data are accommodated. They include:
- UK: The National Insurance Number is now available as a form of tax identification for individuals when they do not have another form of tax identification.
- Indonesia: Bank numbers are now limited to 3 digits.
- Three new tax fields are now available for Isle of Man vendors.
- Tax Reference Number
- Company Registration Number
- National Insurance Number (NINO)
- Mexico: Suppliers can now upload a new document, “Opinión de Cumplimiento de Obligaciones Fiscales”, as part of their onboarding.
- Japan: Individuals can bypass adding a personal tax ID number.
July 3, 2024
Updated VAT question for EU countries
The VAT question has been updated to new language — "Is your company registered for cross-border VAT in the VAT Information Exchange System (VIES)?" — for the following countries:"AT", "BE", "BG", "CY", "CZ", "DE", "DK", "EE", "EL", "ES", "FI", "FR", "HR", "HU", "IE", "IT", "LT", "LU", "LV", "MT", "NL", "PL", "PT", "RO", "SE", "SI", "SK", and "XI".
New Notification Setting for Connection Sub-Processor Updates
Buyers can now select to be notified if a supplier connection updates their third-party subprocesser lists. If the list changes on the Privacy or the InfoSec topics, an acknowledgement task will be created if "Buyer "is selected in the "Notify upon change" column.
June 5, 2024
New GenAI Question Added
In the AI question library, a new question is now available:
“Is there a way for your customers to disable Generative AI technology/services?”
Puerto Rican Suppliers Can Now Upload Merchant Registration Certificates
A new question now prompts suppliers and vendors who operate in Puerto Rico to upload a Merchant Registration Certificate.
New Alternative to IBAN When Adding UK Banks
When creating a new UK bank account in Graphite, if the full International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is not preferred, users can submit the Sort Code instead. Previously, Graphite Support had to complete this request.
Canadian Non-Profits, Companies in Brunei and British Virgin Islands Will No Longer Require a Tax ID
Suppliers who qualify will not be asked to provide a Tax ID Number (TIN).
May 1st, 2024
MSME tax questions have been streamlined
The MSME (India) tax questions are now linked, so they will be updated together when they appear in other sections and topics of the profile. This will save time for suppliers and reduce errors and inconsistencies.
The 12 Months Risk Assessment question in the Information Security topic is now required
The question below is now required by default:
- Has your company conducted a risk assessment within the last 12 months covering the infrastructure and applications used to deliver services to your customers?
New Bitsight data now selectable in Advanced Search
The following Bitsight data is now targetable in Advanced Search:
- Bitsight Tier
- Bitsight Data - Rating
- Bitsight Data - Rating Date
- Bitsight Data - Rating Range
- Bitsight Data - Industry Average
Two new accessibility questions added to the question library
You can now add two additional questions for suppliers regarding accessibility:
- Does your product meet minimum accessibility requirements for keyboard support, color contrast, and captioning?
- Do you commit to fixing accessibility issues in a commercially reasonable timeframe?
New Software Integration question
A new question, “Does your product integrate with any external systems?”, was added as the parent to the question, “Select which systems integrate with your product?”:
This question is dependent on the question “Does your company sell software to customers?” being answered affirmatively.
Update to Country mismatch warning to handle both supplier and customer connections
Graphite has a warning to detect if a connection has answered their country of registration differently than what was expected as filled out in the initial request form. This question previously was worded only for supplier connections and didn’t make sense for customer connections. This warning now has been updated to handle customer connections with an additional error message option of, “Warning: Your country of registration does not match what was specified by your customer”
Update to answer options to GST question
The answer options for the question, “Is your company registered for Goods and Services Tax (GST)?” have been updated to better handle needed logic for reverse charges.
- “Exempt (below threshold/foreign vendor)” updated to “Exempt (below threshold)”
- New option added “Reverse Charge (Legal, sponsorship, foreign vendor, others)”
April 3rd, 2024
New Information Security Question About Artificial Intelligence (AI) – To mirror our Data Privacy topic, we’ve included the same question about AI into the Information Security topic. This question is marked as required but must be turned on by customers. The question and check box options are listed below.
Q: What data does your company use to train your AI model? (Select all that apply)
A1: Publicly available personal data (for example, data scraped from internet)
A2: Data sourced from data brokers
A3: Data sourced from our other clients
A4: Sensitive data types or proxies for sensitive data types such as health or biometric data, sex, race, color, gender, national origin, gender identity, religion, political belief, geography, income, disability, age, sexual orientation, vocation, marital status
Update to Bank Account Type Question – Users no longer have the ability to select “None” as an answer to the question “Is this a checking or savings account?” in bank records. This response was not used by our supplier network and was incompatible with certain ERPs.