Walkthrough · 3 min read
How to Add a Supplier
Get a supplier on file so you can raise a purchase order or compare quotes across an RFQ.
Open Purchase Orders → Suppliers
From the sidebar, go to Purchase Orders (visible to Buyer and Management roles). You'll see three tabs: Purchase Orders, Suppliers, and Price List. Switch to Suppliers and click Add Supplier.
Fill in the supplier record
Company Name is the only required field. Contact Name, Email, Phone, and Address are all optional but worth having before you email your first purchase order to them.
Two fields pay off later rather than immediately: Payment Terms (e.g. "Net 30") and Lead Time (days) — both are just reference fields for now, but feed into supplier scorecards and delivery tracking down the line. Preferred Currency and Tax Rate default sensibly (your tenant's base currency and default tax rate) if this supplier doesn't need anything different.
Save
Click Save Supplier. Like adding a customer, this drops you back on the supplier list rather than opening anything automatically — but the supplier is immediately available to pick from the moment you go to raise a purchase order.
Watch out for this
There's no inline "add a supplier" shortcut from inside the purchase order form itself — if the Supplier dropdown there shows "No suppliers yet — add one first," you need to come back to this Suppliers tab before you can raise anything.
What you can do once they're on file
- ·Raise a purchase order straight away. A PO doesn't require an RFQ first — one supplier on file is enough to create and send your first PO.
- ·Run a RFQ, once you have two or more. Comparing quotes across suppliers (Request for Quote) needs at least two suppliers selected — a good reason not to stop at just one for anything you buy regularly.
- ·Record their pricing. The Price List tab lets you keep per-supplier item pricing on file, and each supplier's own detail view has a Contacts section (for more than one point of contact) and a Scorecard tracking their on-time delivery record.
Next: raise your first purchase order, or if you haven't already, add a customer.
Still stuck?
Email hello@manufacturerp.co.uk and a real person will help — not a ticket queue.