Suppliers

Suppliers

A supplier record is one row per external company you transact with — a hardware reseller, a software vendor, a managed-service provider. The register feeds the picker on purchase orders and contracts, and gives you one place to find the account manager when you need to ring.

What’s on a supplier

• Name — display name. Use the trading name, not the legal entity name (unless they’re the same).
• Reference code — your internal short-code. Optional, but useful for filing.
• Account manager name + email + phone — the human you actually deal with. Update when your account passes to a new rep.
• Website — URL. Surfaces in the row’s actions.
• Is active — flag. Inactive suppliers stay in the database (history still references them) but are hidden from new-record pickers.

Contracts and PO counts

The index shows two counts per supplier:

• Contracts — total contracts referencing this supplier.
• Active contracts — subset with status active.

A supplier with zero contracts and zero recent POs is a candidate for marking inactive.

When to use the same record vs split

• Same legal entity, multiple account managers — one supplier record, with the primary AM in the fields. Note the others in a contract-level note rather than splitting the supplier.
• Same brand, different operating companies (e.g. RM PLC vs RM Education Limited) — separate records if the invoicing entity differs.
• Reseller vs manufacturer — record the reseller (whoever you actually paid). Manufacturer goes on the asset itself.

Gotchas

• Marking a supplier inactive doesn’t archive its POs or contracts. They stay visible against the supplier; the row just disappears from new-record dropdowns.
• The free-text fields aren’t validated. “acc.mgr@vendor.co.uk” is accepted as an email; the system doesn’t bounce-test.
• Account manager phone is one field — there’s no place for a switchboard + extension separately. Use a format your team agrees on, e.g. “0800 123 4567 ext. 218”.

Related

• Purchase orders
• Contracts