A vendor record that does not say what they sell you is an address book entry. This is the step that makes it a purchasing tool.
Services and products
List what this vendor supplies. It is free text, because real suppliers do not fit a taxonomy — A4 8pp brochure, 130gsm is what you actually buy.
The count appears on the record as Services and products, and it is the first line of “what they have been worth” for a reason: a vendor who supplies one thing and a vendor who supplies forty are different relationships.
Turning them into items
There is an action that creates inventory items from a vendor’s service list, so you are not typing the same forty lines into two places.
| Behaviour | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Matches on name | Running it twice does not duplicate anything. Anything already there is matched, not recreated. |
| Reports created and matched | You are told exactly what it did — how many were new and how many already existed. |
| Can set preferred supplier | Every matched item can have this vendor set as its preferred supplier in the same movement. |
The name match is what makes this safe to re-run. Add three services next month, run it again, and you get three new items — not forty-three.
Price lists
A vendor can be attached to a price list — what this vendor charges, where it differs from the ordinary purchase rate.
Attach it once and the rate comes onto a purchase order by itself. That is worth more than it sounds: the commonest purchasing error is not a wrong vendor, it is last year’s rate on this year’s order, and nobody notices because the number looks plausible.
Preferred supplier
An item can name the vendor you usually buy it from. When stock runs low, that is who the system suggests. Setting it is a two-second job on the item, or automatic when you seed items from a vendor’s services.
Why a price list beats remembering
The most common purchasing mistake is not ordering from the wrong supplier. It is ordering at last year’s rate — or this year’s rate for a different quantity — because the number looked about right to whoever typed it.
A price list attached to the vendor puts the agreed rate on the order automatically. The person raising it does not have to know the rate, and does not have to be the person who negotiated it.
| Without a price list | With one |
|---|---|
| Somebody remembers, or asks, or guesses. | The agreed rate arrives on the line. |
| A rate rise is noticed at the bill, if at all. | A bill that does not match the order is visible. |
| The rate lives in an email from March. | The rate lives on the vendor. |
Seeding items, step by step
- Fill in the vendor’s services and products — what they actually supply, in the words you buy it by.
- Run the action that creates inventory items from that list.
- Read what it reports: how many were created and how many matched something already there.
- Let it set this vendor as the preferred supplier on the matched items, if they are the one you go back to.
Because it matches on name, running it again next month adds only what is new. There is no penalty for re-running it, which means you will.
This is most of the value of the vendor record for a business that buys stock. It turns a supplier’s catalogue into your item list once, instead of somebody typing the same forty lines into two screens.
A worked example: last year's rate
You agreed ₹48 a unit for A4 brochures in January. In September somebody raises an order for 5,000.
| Without a price list | With one | |
|---|---|---|
| The rate used | ₹45 — what they half-remember | ₹48 — what was agreed |
| Order value | ₹2,25,000 | ₹2,40,000 |
| What the vendor bills | ₹2,40,000 | ₹2,40,000 |
| What happens next | A ₹15,000 discrepancy and an argument | Nothing. They match. |
Nobody did anything wrong in the left-hand column. Somebody typed a plausible number from memory, which is exactly what people do when the system does not know the answer.
Where to go next
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