Purchasing: suppliers and your price list

Add a supplier, check and make it active, and build the price list your team orders from: kinds of purchase, items and agreed prices.

What's in this video

1. Before anyone can order, Purchasing needs to know who you buy from, and what you buy often. Let's start with suppliers. Click Suppliers, under Set up.
2. Two suppliers are here already. Let's add the company we buy most of our heating and air conditioning parts from. Click Add a supplier.
3. Type the company's name, and the name they trade under, if it's different. The short code goes on your orders. Leave it empty, and it's made from the name.
4. The email is where your orders are sent, so use the supplier's orders address, not one salesperson's. Then their phone number, and how many days you have to pay their bills.
5. Tick Preferred supplier. When someone asks to buy something without choosing a supplier, the preferred one is used. Then click Add supplier.
6. Here's Kestrel's page. A new supplier starts as Not set up, and orders can't go to it yet. That's on purpose: it gives you time to check who they are, and their bank details, before any money goes their way.
7. Click Start setting up while you check them. When you're happy, click Make active. Now orders can go to Kestrel.
8. You can also invite them to the supplier portal. There they confirm your orders, and send their bills online, and they only ever see their own orders. If their bank details change, the change is held until someone checks it.
9. Now the price list. It holds the things you buy often, at the prices you've agreed. Requests pick these up, so an engineer orders the right part at the right price, without ringing the office. Click Price list.
10. First, kinds of purchase. They group what you buy, for budgets and reports. Click Kind of purchase, and call it Heating and air con parts. Tick Must be for a job only if every purchase of this kind has to be for a job. We also buy these for stock, so we leave it. Then click Add.
11. Now click Item. Give it a clear name, and the supplier's own code, so your orders match their catalogue. Sold per is each, box, or metre. Choose the kind of purchase, and the usual supplier.
12. An item has no price until you add one. Click Price. Choose the item and the supplier, and type the price each. Use Until for a price that's only agreed for a while, so an old price doesn't carry on by mistake.
13. There's the motor, from Kestrel, at one hundred and forty eight pounds each. The rest of the list was added the same way. If two suppliers sell the same item, add a price for each.
14. The thing people most often forget is the price. An item without one shows No price yet, and engineers end up typing their own. In the next video, we'll set the spending rules: what's approved by itself, and who approves the rest.