To have a good conversation with your software supplier about the furniture passport, you mainly need overviews, not a thick file. There are four items: an overview of the product data you are already recording, an overview of the systems in which that data is stored, a description of who in your chain acts as the provider of the passport, and a draft of the agreements you want to make with the supplier about hosting, access and data transfer. With those four items, a supplier can assess what is technically necessary, and you can yourself judge whether the offer matches your situation.
The detail that plays the biggest role in this conversation is in that last point: what happens if the relationship with the supplier ever ends. Once the obligation comes into force, a passport must remain accessible for a longer period. Furnipas.eu applies ten years for this. A supplier who makes an attractive offer today is not automatically the same party in five or ten years, and precisely for that reason an agreement on transferability should be standard in the documents you prepare.
The list of items
The first item is an overview of what you are already recording: material lists, article numbers, origin data, repair and maintenance information. This does not need to be a new document, an export from your existing system is often sufficient. The second item is a brief description of where that data comes from: your ERP system, a PIM environment, or simply a spreadsheet maintained at procurement. A supplier must know whether he needs to interface with a system or whether he must support manual entry.
The third item concerns your role in the chain. The regulation distinguishes between different parties who can act as the provider of the passport, and this is not the same party in every company. A brief note about who in your organization fulfills that role, or who does so on your behalf, prevents the conversation with the supplier from getting stuck on a question that should actually have been answered internally. More about that distinction can be found in the explanation of roles and concepts in the regulation.
The fourth item is the draft of the agreements themselves: a brief list of what you want to record about hosting duration, availability, and what happens when you switch. This does not need to be a legal contract at the time of the first conversation, but a supplier who can discuss it right away gives an indication of how seriously this side of the service is taken.
Why the exit agreement is the focal point
With many other IT services, a switch is inconvenient but manageable: export data, new supplier imports. With a product passport it is different, because the QR code that is on the product itself points to a fixed location. If that location changes without the code being adjusted, the data carrier no longer works for products already at the customer. Therefore, ask not only whether data is transferable, but also how the existing QR codes continue to work if you switch suppliers. How furnipas.eu arranges this continuity itself is explained on the page about the working method and origin of the data.
What the supplier in turn must be able to demonstrate
Conversely, it is reasonable to ask a supplier what they have arranged themselves: where the data will be hosted, how long the service is guaranteed to be provided, and what happens if the company itself ceases to exist or is taken over. These are not legal questions you need to answer yourself, but practical questions that determine whether an offer is sustainable for the duration the regulation requires. A number of these questions, with brief explanations, are collected on the page with frequently asked questions about suppliers and hosting.
Where this conversation connects
The documents you prepare for this conversation often overlap with what you already have for other obligations, such as data processor agreements under the GDPR if personal data is involved, or existing purchasing terms. It is not a matter of starting from scratch, but of laying existing documents side by side and seeing where supplementation is needed.
Would you like an indication of what is specifically relevant for your company before you enter into a conversation with a supplier? Then the free quick-scan in a few questions provides an initial direction, and the knowledge bank offers further topics to read through at your leisure.