A vendor is anyone you buy from: manufacturers, showrooms, dealers,
workrooms, fabricators, freight companies.
The record is small, and it does a lot of work. Products attach to it,
purchase orders draw from it, and the Procurement view groups by it.
The record
Adding one without typing it
Scan a card, above the vendor list, reads a vendor off a photograph, a
quote or their website and hands you the form filled in.
Import a vendor covers it, including why
the result often has blanks in it — and why those blanks are the point.
Why it earns its keep
- Purchase orders write themselves — A PO pulls the vendor’s details, so
raising one is a matter of choosing items rather than re-typing an
address.
- Ordering by vendor — Group the Procurement view by vendor and each
group becomes one purchase order.
- Terms in one place — Deposit and lead-time expectations sit where the
next person will look.
- Chasing has a name attached — Who do we call about the sofa has an
answer that is not “check the emails”.
Keeping it useful
- Add the vendor when you add their first product. Ten seconds then,
versus reconstructing it under pressure at order time.
- Record the logistics contact separately. The person who sells you the
sofa is rarely the person who can find it.
- Write terms down as you learn them. 50% deposit, six-week lead, no
returns on custom fabric — the details that decide whether an
installation date is realistic.
Your vendor list is one of the more valuable things your studio owns. It is
the accumulated knowledge of who is reliable, who discounts, and who takes
four months when they said six weeks.