> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.getatelier.design/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Import a vendor

> Read a vendor off a business card, a quote or their website instead of typing it — and why blank fields in the result are the point.

A vendor record is small, and you need it before the first purchase order.
Typing one out of a business card at the end of a showroom visit is the kind of
job that gets postponed until the order is already late.

Atelier can read one instead — from a photograph, a document, or the vendor's
own website — and hand you a filled-in form to check. **Nothing is saved until
you confirm it**, so the worst case is a form you close.

Each import costs one AI credit.

## Three ways in

| Where                               | What it reads                        | Good for                             |
| ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------ |
| **Vendors → Scan a card**           | A photo, PDF or the vendor's website | A vendor you do not have yet         |
| Inside a vendor's own form          | A photo or PDF                       | Filling gaps in one you already have |
| A file already attached to a vendor | That attachment                      | A quote you filed months ago         |

The first is the usual door, and despite the name it takes more than cards: a
specification, a quote, an invoice, a screenshot of an email, or a website
address.

Inside an existing vendor the offer narrows to a file — there is no website
field there — and it only **fills what is blank**. Anything you have already
written stays as it is, so reading a quote into a vendor you have been keeping
by hand cannot overwrite your own work.

## What comes back

The name, what they supply, and any contact details that were actually there —
an address, a phone number, an email, and a named person if the source names
one. It arrives as an ordinary vendor form, filled in. Correct anything that is
wrong, add what is missing, and save.

<Note>
  Blank fields are usually correct, not a failure. Most supplier home pages carry
  no address or phone at all, and a vendor read from one comes back with a name,
  a category and nothing else. That is the honest answer for that page.
</Note>

## Why it leaves fields empty

This is worth understanding, because it looks like the import underperforming
when it is the opposite.

A model asked to fill a form will fill it. Given a page with no contact details
on it, earlier versions of this import returned a phone number, a street
address and a sales manager — none of which existed anywhere on the site. A
plausible invention is worse than a blank, because a blank is obviously
unfinished and an invention is not: it gets saved, and six weeks later an order
goes to an address nobody checked.

So the details that must be **copied** rather than worked out — email, phone,
address, website, and the whole contact person — are checked against the source
before they reach you, and dropped when they are not in it. A contact whose
name is not in the source is dropped entirely, since a name is the one part of
a person that cannot be inferred.

The name and category are different: those are read off the page as a whole, so
"Lighting" is a fair answer for a site selling pendant lamps even though the
word may not appear.

## Websites and documents differ

A **website** import is checked against the page's own text, so a detail either
appears on that page or does not appear in your form.

A **document** import — a card, a quote, a scan — has no such text to check
against. Obvious dummies are still struck out, but a plausible-looking phone
number on a blurry scan cannot be told from a real one.

<Warning>
  Give a document import a glance before saving, particularly the phone and
  email. That is the one path where a wrong value can look right.
</Warning>

## When it cannot read something

It says so, rather than producing something that looks like an answer. A file
that is too blurry to read, a document that turns out not to be about a
supplier, and one that names no company each get their own message, and nothing
is created.

A website that is slow, script-heavy or behind a sign-in may time out. Try the
vendor's contact or about page rather than a deep link into their catalogue, or
add the vendor by hand — the record is only a few fields.

## Afterwards

Everything the import fills in is an ordinary vendor record. It has no special
status, and nothing about it is locked: add the logistics contact it could not
know about, write down the terms you agreed, attach the quote.

<Tip>
  Import at the moment you meet the vendor, not at order time. The card is in
  your hand and the website is open; six weeks later you will be reconstructing
  both under pressure.
</Tip>