Adding and managing a supplier

Suppliers live under Catalog, then Suppliers. The list shows your active suppliers, with a star to mark favourites. Filters on the left narrow the list by company name, country, contact name, activity and department. Click a supplier's name to open its page.

Adding a supplier

1. Open Catalog, then Suppliers.
2. Select Add new at the top right.
3. Under Company Information, enter the Company Name. It is the only required field, and two suppliers cannot share a name.
4. Fill in the Website, Company Email, Company Phone and Tax/VAT Number if you have them, then the Main Contact and the Address.
5. In the Settings section, choose the Departments, Currency, Payment Term and Incoterm.
6. Leave Active switched on.
7. Select Save.

The Currency, Payment Term and Incoterm fill in on every new purchase order for this supplier and can be changed on the order. The Country decides the language the order's PDF is written in. Departments decide who can see the supplier and its orders when accounts are limited to certain departments.

Adding, editing and deleting suppliers requires the Add / Edit Supplier permission. Without it, Add new, Edit Supplier and Delete are not shown.

The number of suppliers depends on your plan. At the limit, Add new is greyed out and the list shows a notice inviting you to upgrade.

You do not upload a logo. When a supplier has a Website, StockBold fetches that site's icon shortly after you save and shows it as the supplier's logo. Changing the website replaces the logo.

Editing a supplier

Open the supplier and select Edit Supplier at the top of the page. On a phone, it is in the … menu. The form is the same as for adding.

If you remove a department from the supplier, a Remove Departments from Supplier window first lists the supplier's products that leave that department too. Select Remove & Save to go ahead.

The supplier's page

The page opens on the Home tab, with figures such as total orders, total spent, stock value and pending deliveries, followed by Company Information, Main Contact, Payment & Shipping and the most recent purchase orders.

The other tabs are Products, with the supplier's products and their stock; Purchase Orders, which appears if you can read purchase orders; and Documents, with the files on the supplier's products and orders. New Order starts a purchase order for this supplier, and New Product adds a product to it.

With Add / Edit Supplier, the Home tab also has an Email matching card. It shows the supplier's email domains and addresses, which the supplier inbox uses to file mail under this supplier. The supplier inbox articles explain it.

If your account is limited to certain departments, you see the suppliers in those departments. A supplier outside them that supplies an order you can see opens marked Read only.

Payment terms and Incoterms

The header of the Suppliers page has two more buttons, Incoterms and Payment terms. Only their icons appear on smaller screens.

Each opens a window listing your codes, with a box to add a code, such as FOB or NET30, and an optional description. Codes must be unique. Hover over a row for its edit and delete buttons; on a touch screen they are always shown.

Changing Incoterms requires the Manage Incoterms permission, included in the Admin, Purchasing and Accounting roles. Changing payment terms requires Manage Payment Terms, included in the Admin and Purchasing roles. The owner always has both. Without the permission, the window only lists the codes.

An Incoterm or payment term that a supplier or a purchase order uses cannot be deleted; the message says how many use it.

A payment term can also carry instalment rules that build a payment schedule on each order. See Payment terms and instalments on a purchase order.

Retiring or deleting a supplier

To stop using a supplier, switch Active off rather than deleting it. It leaves your lists and pickers and keeps all its history. See Marking a supplier active or inactive.