An approved vendor list that nobody prunes becomes a list of everybody you have ever cleared. After three years it answers no useful question at all.
So there is a sweep.
How it works
- You set a number of days.
- Overnight, any approved vendor with nothing raised, billed or paid inside that window moves to inactive.
- The moment anything happens — an order, a bill, a payment — they move straight back to active.
Nothing is lost
Inactive is not deleted, archived or hidden. The record and its whole history stay as they are, and — this is the part people expect to be wrong — you can still raise an order against an inactive vendor. Approved, active and inactive all allow it.
Inactive means “we have not used them lately”. It does not mean “we cannot use them”. If you want that, you want blocked.
Choosing a number
| Days | Suits |
|---|---|
| 0 | Off. The default. Nothing moves on its own. |
| 90 | Fast-moving buying, where a quarter of silence is meaningful. |
| 180 | Most businesses. |
| 365 | Seasonal or project work, where a year is one cycle. |
If you are unsure, 365 is the safe first choice. It catches the genuinely dormant without touching a supplier you use once a year for something important.
What stops the clock
The clock reads the latest of: a purchase order raised (drafts and cancelled ones do not count), a bill received, or a payment made. A vendor with none of those has the day they were approved used instead, so a newly cleared vendor is not swept on the first night.
A year in the life of one vendor
Say the sweep is set to 180 days.
| When | What happens | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Jan | Approved by accounts. | Approved |
| 2 Feb | First purchase order raised. | Active, on its own |
| 14 Mar | Their bill is paid. | Active |
| 10 Sep | 180 days of nothing. The overnight sweep runs. | Inactive, on its own |
| 3 Nov | You need them again and raise an order. | Active, on its own |
Nobody touched the status once, all year. That is the whole idea — the list describes what actually happened rather than what somebody remembered to update.
What it does not do
- It does not touch blocked vendors. A block is a decision, and nothing undoes it quietly.
- It does not touch vendors still being screened — pool, available or shortlisted. They were never active to go quiet from.
- It does not delete, archive or hide anything.
- It does not stop you ordering. Inactive is one of the three stages that still allows it.
Turning the sweep on for the first time in an old account will move a lot of vendors at once, overnight. That is correct, and it is usually the first honest picture of how many suppliers the business really uses.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.