Suppliers

Suppliers are the companies you buy from. Each supplier keeps your commercial terms with them (currency, payment terms, account number) and a list of the products it supplies, with its own references, prices and lead times. Purchase orders, receipts and vendor bills all start from a supplier.

Before you begin

• The Purchasing module must be enabled. It requires Contacts, Product Catalog, Inventory and Taxes.
• To view suppliers you need purchasing.supplier.read; to create and edit them, purchasing.supplier.write. See Permissions.
• Products you buy should exist in the product catalog before you record what a supplier supplies.

Key concepts

A supplier is a company. Every supplier is linked to a company in the Contacts module. The supplier's name is always the company's name, and the supplier's people and address are the company's. When you edit the company's name, address or people in Contacts, the supplier page shows the change. See Contacts and companies.

Products supplied. For each product (or product variant) a supplier sells you, you record the supplier's SKU, its price, a minimum quantity, a lead time and whether this is the preferred supplier for that item. These prices are used when you add the product to a purchase order.

Buyer. The Buyer field is the person in your organization who owns the relationship. Supplier permissions can be limited to the suppliers a person owns as buyer (or their team's).

Open the supplier list

Select Purchasing in the main menu. The page opens on the Suppliers tab.

The supplier list.

The list shows each supplier's Name, Code, Currency, Payment terms (days), the number of Products supplied and the Buyer. You can:

• Search with Search suppliers.
• Filter to Active suppliers with the quick filter.
• Sort, choose columns (for example show Active or Tax number), save views, and import or export suppliers.

Create a supplier

1. On the Suppliers tab, select New supplier.

2. Choose the supplier's Company from Contacts, or type a name in Or a new company to create the company at the same time. You must do one or the other.

3. Fill in the rest of the form:

   Field	What it is
   Code	Optional short code, stored in upper case. Must be unique among suppliers.
   Main contact	The person at the supplier who receives your purchase orders by default.
   Currency	The currency you buy in. Defaults to your organization's currency. New purchase orders and supplier prices use it.
   Payment terms (days)	Days you have to pay the supplier's bills (0–365, default 30).
   Tax number	The supplier's tax or VAT number.
   Our account number with them	Your customer number at the supplier.
   Buyer	Who in your organization manages this supplier.
   Active	Inactive suppliers cannot be chosen on new purchase orders.
   Notes	Free text.

4. Select Save. The supplier's page opens.

note

A company can only be one supplier. If the company you choose is already a supplier, the form tells you so. When you choose a company that has no type or is a Prospect, its type in Contacts becomes Supplier.

The supplier page

Open a supplier from the list to see everything about it in one place.

A supplier page with its contacts and purchase orders.

• Header: the supplier's name and code, an Inactive badge if it is inactive, and its performance: Orders (purchase orders sent to it) and On time (see Supplier performance).
• Products supplied: what the supplier sells you, cheapest first.
• Contacts: the company's people from Contacts, with job title, email and phone.
• Purchase orders: the supplier's latest purchase orders with status, expected date and total (visible if you can view purchase orders).
• Details: main contact, currency, payment terms, tax number, account number, buyer and notes.
• Address: the company's address and phone. Select Open the company to edit them in Contacts.

Other modules may add sections below, such as custom fields, documents and activities.

To change the supplier's terms, select Edit. The company itself cannot be changed after the supplier is created.

Record the products a supplier supplies

1. Open the supplier.

2. In Products supplied, select Add a product.

3. Choose the Product and, for a product sold in variants, the Variant.

4. Enter the supplier's details for it:

   Field	What it is
   Supplier SKU	The supplier's own reference. It is printed on your purchase orders.
   Price	What the supplier charges per unit.
   Currency	The price's currency. Defaults to the supplier's currency.
   Minimum quantity	The smallest quantity the supplier accepts.
   Lead time (days)	How long the supplier usually takes to deliver.
   Preferred supplier	Marks this supplier as the preferred one for this item.

5. Select Save.

Each product or variant can appear only once per supplier. An item has at most one preferred supplier: marking a supplier as preferred removes the mark from any other supplier of that item.

To change or remove an item, open it from the list. Removing it (Remove this product?) only means the supplier no longer supplies it; the product stays in the catalog.

Suppliers on product pages

Each product page in the catalog has a Suppliers section listing who supplies it, with the preferred supplier first and then the cheapest. Each row shows the supplier's SKU, lead time (in days) and price. See Product catalog.

Who supplies a product, shown on the product's page.

Supplier performance

The supplier page header shows two figures:

• Orders: the number of purchase orders sent to the supplier (drafts are not counted).
• On time: the share of receipts recorded on or before their purchase order's Expected date, as a percentage. Receipts of orders without an expected date are not counted. The figure appears once at least one such receipt exists.

To keep the on-time rate meaningful, set an Expected date on your purchase orders and record receipts on the day goods arrive.

Deactivate or delete a supplier

• To stop ordering from a supplier but keep its history, select Edit and clear Active.
• To delete a supplier, select Edit and then delete it. Deleting a supplier also deletes the list of products it supplies; its company stays in Contacts.

warning

A supplier that has purchase orders (or, with Accounts Payable, bills or payments) cannot be deleted. Make it inactive instead. Likewise, a company or product used by a supplier cannot be deleted from Contacts or the catalog.

How suppliers connect to other modules

Module	What it uses from the supplier
Purchase orders	Currency, buyer, main contact (recipient of the PDF), address (for taxes), and supplier prices and SKUs on lines.
Taxes	The supplier company's address decides which tax rates apply to its purchase orders.
Accounts payable	Vendor bills are entered for a supplier; their due date defaults to the bill date plus the supplier's payment terms.
Contacts and companies	The supplier's company, people and address.

Permissions

Permission	What it allows	Granted by default to
purchasing.supplier.read	View suppliers (can be limited to their own or their team's)	Admin, Member
purchasing.supplier.write	Create and edit suppliers and what they supply (can be limited)	Admin
purchasing.supplier.delete	Delete suppliers (can be limited)	Admin
purchasing.manage	Manage purchasing settings	Admin

"Can be limited" means an administrator can restrict the permission to the suppliers a person owns as Buyer, or to those of their team, in the role's settings.

Tips

• Give suppliers a short Code (for example ACME) so they are easy to find and to match in imports.
• Record supplier prices in the supplier's currency. A purchase order only picks up a supplier price whose currency matches the order's currency.
• Use Preferred supplier to show at a glance, on each product page, who you normally buy an item from.