What this screen is for
The cards act as quick filters over the list: all vendors, active, those that are also customers, those holding a tax identifier, and inactive. The list holds the supplier records used when raising purchase bills and payments, and vendors can be added one at a time or imported.
Why it matters
The also-customer flag matters when the same business buys from you as well as selling to you, because their receivable and payable balances are tracked separately even though the trading relationship is one. A missing tax identifier is worth correcting before raising purchase documents, since it is carried onto them. What vendors are called follows your Terminology settings.
What you see on this screen
The cards at the top are clickable filters rather than plain counters: total vendors, active, Also Customer, those holding a tax identifier, and inactive.
The table has six columns plus any custom fields you have chosen to show in the list. Vendor is the name and reference number. Contact is the email and phone. The third column is the tax identifier, headed to match your country. Invoices counts the purchase documents raised against them. Status says whether they are still in use. Actions holds View, Edit, History and Delete.
Deleting shows what is linked first - bills in particular - and refuses where deletion would break those records. Where the vendor is also a customer, the confirmation says so and explains that deleting removes only the vendor side, leaving the customer record in place.
Filters and actions
A Search box matches name, email, phone, vendor number and tax identifier. Filters reveals Status (All, Active, Inactive), Also Customer (All, Yes, No), a tax-identifier filter (All, Yes, No) and rows per page of 20, 50 or 100. Any custom field marked as filterable also appears here. A sort control offers Latest, Name, Vendor number or Email, ascending or descending. Add creates one; the import brings in many at once; History on a row shows every change made to that vendor.
Status values
Active - offered when raising purchase documents. Inactive - retained with all their history, but no longer offered.
Related
- Customers - the sales side of the same idea
- Groups - grouping customers and vendors together
- Custom Fields - extra fields on the vendor record