Supplier management

Supplier management

Introduction

To manage supplier, you use the Supplier module located under the Business Menu. With this module you can:

  • Create or import suppliers
  • Bulk update suppliers 
  • Import products 
  • See the buying history for the supplier
  • Control restrictions 
  • Add notes 
  • Add documents 
  • Email all or selected suppliers 
  • Enable AutoPilot

Supplier List View

The list view has a number of features as you can see below: 

As with our similar list views you can use the filter to find the desired supplier and also use the table icon to display the fields you wish to see. 

You can Batch Email suppliers as well – if you select all or make a selection the email icon will show a form where you can send an email. 

You can also Download your suppliers to CSV  – either all or selected. 

You can also Batch Update the suppliers – make a selection and click the update button. This will allow you to change things like the payment terms.

Finally, if you are connected to a finance system you can Sync your suppliers.

Creating Suppliers

We recommend you create your suppliers in Zahara and sync the new records back into your finance system. You can then control who has the permission to create suppliers. Read our help article on User Permissions

To create a supplier, click the + ‘New Supplier’ icon

You will be taken through a multi-part form that you can complete with a minimal amount of information.

Editing a supplier

You can edit a supplier at any time, just click the Edit icon in the list view as shown above. Once you are in view mode, there are two parts. You can edit the form and the different tabs using the edit icon in the lower section: 

There is also a header section that can be edited by clicking on the cogs icon: 

Clicking this will reveal some additional options:

You can disable the supplier so it doesn’t appear as an available supplier when raising a purchase. You can also set the supplier as ‘Trusted’ which is used in the invoice AutoPilot feature

You can also delete a supplier from this menu. 

Each tab of the supplier record can be edited individually using the Edit icon. 

Tagging Suppliers

Tags are a really useful feature and will be used more widely in Zahara going forward. You can add a tag to a supplier and save it very easily. 

Click +Tag, type a tag name, press the enter key on your keyboard. Click Save. 

In the future, you will be able to filter in the list view using the tags. So in the example above, if “Insurance” is keyed into the supplier search area, the list view shows the A Plan insurance supplier (and any others with tags or names that contain insurance).

Save Manually Added Products 

You can allow products to be added to the supplier record every time an order or invoice is created, provided the product code is populated on the line item and provided the “Store manually added products” option is ticked on the Details pane of the supplier record as shown in the image below.

This enables your product catalogue to be built on the fly. However, you may absolutely not want this as well. In which case, untick the setting on relevant supplier records. By default, the addition of products is enabled.

Restricted Buying 

If you have negotiated pricing with your suppliers on specific products, you may want to stop your buyers from adding or creating their own products. You can do this by ticking the box that says “Restricted Buying” under the details tab of the supplier record. Once this supplier is selected in the purchase, the ability to add line items is removed. The buyer can only select from the pre-set product list.

 

 

Importing Products

We have a dedicated article for this task. Please have a read here

Bulk Update Suppliers

You can select suppliers – all or a select few and then click the Update button. This will allow you to: 

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