Effective vendor management is a cornerstone of a robust security and compliance program, especially for audits like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Drata's native Tropic connector pulls supplier records directly from Tropic's procurement platform into your Drata vendor registry.
This article explains how the integration works, how vendors are matched against your existing registry, how often the sync runs, and how to set it up.
Prerequisites
The Tropic connection is configured entirely within Drata using a Tropic API key. Refer to Tropic’s Getting Started with the Tropic API and Webhooks article for instructions on generating the API Key.
Reach out to your Tropic admin if you need help generating an API key or confirming which Tropic environment (sandbox or production) you should point at.
Additional information
You can use Dry Run Mode in Drata to preview what would sync before any vendor records are created or updated. Turn it off when you’re ready to apply the changes.
How the Integration Works
Once connected, Drata calls Tropic's Suppliers API on a recurring schedule to pull your supplier list, enriches each supplier with its contact details, maps key fields to Drata vendor properties, and then creates or updates the matching vendor in your registry.
Drata applies a default field mapping out of the box, and automatically fills in any additional unmapped fields on the first sync using AI-suggested mappings — so there's no mapping configuration required to get started. The resulting mapping is saved to your connection and can be adjusted later.
Each synced vendor also keeps a link back to its Tropic supplier record, so you can jump from Drata to the original request in Tropic.
Step-by-Step Workflow
Drata connects to Tropic using the API key and domain you provide, and pulls suppliers from Tropic's Suppliers API.
If you've set a Purchase Request Categories filter, Drata resolves those category names against your Tropic categories and pulls only the suppliers in them.
Drata enriches each supplier with its contact information from Tropic.
Drata maps each supplier's fields — name, domain, risk level, business use case, and contact — to the corresponding Drata vendor properties.
Drata matches each incoming supplier against your existing vendor registry to decide whether to update an existing vendor or create a new one.
While Dry Run Mode is enabled, Drata previews what would sync without creating or changing any vendor records.
Once Dry Run Mode is turned off, Drata creates new vendors or updates the ones it matched, and records the Tropic supplier ID against each vendor.
The sync repeats automatically going forward, so changes in Tropic keep flowing into your Drata vendor registry.
Setting Up the Integration in Drata
In your Tropic account, generate an API key. Check with your Tropic admin if you're not sure how to do this.
In Drata, go to Connections in the left sidebar, then open the Available tab.
Search and select for Tropic. You can also use the Procurement filter.
Configure step: Select the workspace(s) you want this connection assigned to, then continue.
Connect step: Enter the following values.
API Key – your Tropic API key. Required.
Domain – Enter the environment associated with the API key you’re using. Use the sandbox environment (sandbox.tropicapp.io)for testing and the production environment (app.tropicapp.io)for your live Tropic data. If you’re unsure which environment to use, ask your Tropic administrator before connecting.
Purchase Request Categories (optional) – a comma-separated list of Tropic category names, for example SaaS, Marketing Tools.
Leave blank to sync all suppliers.
If none of the names you enter match a category in Tropic, the sync stops and tells you which categories are available rather than importing everything.
Dry Run Mode – Leave it on to preview the sync first, or turn it off once you're ready for Drata to create and update live vendor records.
Confirm step: Click Connect. Drata runs a quick health check against Tropic to confirm your credentials are valid, then establishes the connection and starts the first sync.
Customization Options
Adjusting settings after setup: Open the connection from Active Connections at any time to update the Purchase Request Categories filter, toggle Dry Run Mode, change the domain, or set a connection alias.
Field mapping: The mapping Drata generates on the first sync is saved to your connection, so it can be adjusted if you want a Tropic field to land somewhere different in Drata.
How Vendors Are Matched to Your Existing Registry
You may already have vendors in Drata from manual entry, a spreadsheet import, or another integration. Drata compares incoming Tropic suppliers with existing vendors and updates a matching vendor when one is found; otherwise, it creates a new vendor.
Drata works through the following checks in order and stops at the first one that finds a match:
Tropic supplier ID. If Drata has synced this supplier before, it remembers the Tropic ID and goes straight to the vendor it created. This is the most reliable check, and it means renaming a supplier in Tropic updates your existing Drata vendor instead of creating a second one. IDs are scoped to the connection, so they never collide with IDs from another integration.
Exact name. The supplier name matches an existing vendor name character for character.
Website. The supplier's domain matches an existing vendor's URL once both are simplified — Drata ignores http:// and https://, a leading www., and anything after the domain itself. So https://www.example.com/security and example.com are treated as the same vendor.
Simplified name. Drata compares names with the noise removed: capitalization, accents, spaces and punctuation are ignored, and a trailing legal suffix such as Inc, LLC, Ltd, GmbH or Corp is dropped. That means “Acme Corp.”, “acme corp” and “Acme, Corp” all resolve to the same vendor.
Close name match. For anything still unmatched, Drata scores how similar the simplified names are. A very high similarity is treated as the same vendor. A moderate similarity is not merged automatically — Drata records it as a possible match so your team can review it.
AI review. For those moderate, ambiguous cases, Drata asks an AI model to judge whether the two names refer to the same company, using the vendor's name, website and the services it provides as context. If the model confirms the match, the records are merged.
When a supplier matches an existing vendor, Drata updates that vendor in place — incoming values overwrite the mapped fields, and any field Tropic doesn't provide is left untouched. When nothing matches, Drata creates a new vendor. Nothing is ever silently skipped.
Every matching decision is logged, including the ones that found nothing, so you can audit exactly why a given supplier was merged into an existing vendor or created as a new one.
A few things worth knowing:
The first sync has no Tropic IDs to work from, so it relies on the name and website checks. From the second sync onward, most suppliers match instantly on their Tropic ID.
Dry runs don't record Tropic IDs, because no vendors are written. Every dry run therefore re-runs the full matching process from scratch.
If two Tropic suppliers share exactly the same name in one sync, Drata treats them as a single record. Give them distinct names in Tropic if they're genuinely different vendors.
How Often the Sync Runs
The Tropic sync runs automatically every 24 hours.
The first sync starts immediately when you connect. After that, the 24-hour clock starts from the end of the previous sync rather than at a fixed time of day, so the run time drifts slightly depending on how long each sync takes.
A few practical notes on timing:
Every run is a full sync — Drata re-reads your whole Tropic supplier list each time rather than only the changes.
Sync duration depends on how many suppliers you have. Drata paginates through Tropic's API and stays within Tropic's rate limits, then makes an additional call per supplier to pull contacts. For a catalog of roughly a thousand suppliers, expect the contact enrichment stage alone to take on the order of half an hour.
Because the sync is scheduled rather than event-driven, a supplier added in Tropic appears in Drata on the next scheduled run — not the moment it's created.
Reconnecting the connection triggers a fresh sync straight away, which is the quickest way to pull in changes without waiting for the next scheduled run.