One screen that answers the three questions a purchase desk is asked: who are we buying from, what are we spending, and what needs doing.

The tiles

Tile	Answers
Vendors on record	How many you have, at any stage.
Working with you	How many are actually active.
Cleared to order from	How many you may raise an order against.
Orders raised	How many purchase orders exist.
Ordered	What you have committed to.
Still owed to them	Your payables.
Billed by them	What has actually been invoiced.
Paid in the last year	What has gone out.
Open orders	How many are still live.

The two worth reading together are Vendors on record and Working with you. A business with 200 on record and 12 working with it does not have 200 suppliers; it has 12 suppliers and 188 rows.

Waiting on somebody

An amber band above the pipeline, for things that need a person rather than a decision. The one that matters most:

4 vendors with a bank account nobody has checked. Paying an unverified account is how money goes missing.

It stays until somebody checks them. It is meant to be irritating.

The pipeline

All seven stages with a live count against each and a one-line reminder of what each means. A sidebar that says “All vendors” makes somebody open a list and filter it to answer a question the sidebar could have answered; this card answers all seven at once.

Most ordered from, and owed the most

Panel	Read it for
Most ordered from	Concentration. If one supplier is most of your spend, that is a risk whether or not they are any good.
Owed the most	Exposure. Who is carrying you, and who will ring first.

There is also a breakdown by trade and by type, which is the argument for filling both fields in when you add a vendor.

Reading it in two minutes

Clear Waiting on somebody. Unverified bank accounts first — that is the one with money attached.
Compare Vendors on record with Working with you. A large gap means the list needs a clear-out, or the sweep switched on.
Look at Ordered against Billed. Ordered far ahead of billed means orders are sitting undelivered or unbilled.
Look at Billed against Paid, and at Still owed to them. That is your payables position.
Glance at Most ordered from. If one vendor is most of your spend, you have a concentration risk whether or not they are good.

The pipeline card

All seven stages, each with a live count and a one-line reminder of what it means. Two of those counts move without anybody touching them, so the card is a genuine picture rather than a record of who last did some tidying.

The number most worth watching is Approved against Active. A business with forty approved and six active is carrying thirty-four suppliers it cleared and never used — each of which somebody did the work of checking.

If Cleared to order from is much larger than Working with you, the approval step has become a formality somebody performs on arrival rather than a decision. That is worth knowing.

A worked read

The tiles on a real dashboard, and what they say together:

Tile	Reads	Means
Vendors on record	4
Working with you	0	Nobody is active. Nothing has been raised recently.
Cleared to order from	4	All four are approved.
Ordered	₹2.09L	One order exists.
Billed by them	₹0.00	It has never been invoiced.
Still owed to them	₹0.00	You owe nothing — yet.

Four approved suppliers, none active, and a ₹2.09 lakh order that has never been billed. That is not a healthy picture — it is either goods still to arrive or an invoice nobody has entered, and the second is a liability sitting outside your books.

And above all of it, the amber band: 4 vendors with a bank account nobody has checked. That is the thing to do first, because it is the one with money attached.

Where to go next

Next in vendors Give a vendor a login → When a vendor goes quiet →

Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.

The vendor dashboard