1. Purpose
Create a supplier record and select it on a purchase order, so purchase order history shows who you actually bought from.
2. Scope
Creating a supplier, filling in its details, selecting it on a purchase order, and dealing with the placeholder supplier every organization starts with. Receiving stock against a purchase order is outside this document. Setting a supplier on a product record is covered in SWI-024.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Buyer or operations lead | Creates a supplier before raising the first purchase order against it, and keeps names distinguishable. |
Account manager or 3PL admin | Sets up the supplier list per organization, and remembers that a client organization does not inherit the parent's. |
Support | Checks whether an organization is still filing every purchase order against its placeholder supplier before answering questions about purchasing history. |
4. When you need this
The supplier dropdown on a purchase order does not offer the company you are buying from.
Your supplier list shows one entry and it is named after your own organization.
You want purchase order history to show real vendors rather than a single catch-all.
You have added a second organization and its supplier list looks empty compared with the first.
You are recording payment terms, lead times, or a minimum order value against a vendor for the first time.
5. Key concept: the supplier you start with is a placeholder, not a supplier
What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
The supplier list was set up during onboarding, so whatever is in it is what the account was given. | Every organization is created with exactly one supplier, automatically named after the organization itself. It exists so a purchase order can be raised on day one. Everything else you add yourself. |
An empty dropdown would tell me if suppliers still needed setting up. | The dropdown is never empty, because the placeholder is always sitting in it. Supplier setup looks finished when it has not started. |
Suppliers are managed from the purchase order screen, since that is where they get used. | Suppliers have their own page. The purchase order form only picks from records that already exist, so the supplier has to be created first. |
Suppliers carry across my organizations. | Each organization keeps its own list. A supplier added to a parent does not appear for a client organization, and has to be created there separately. |
Putting every purchase order against the one supplier is harmless. | Purchase order history is your record of who you bought from and on what terms. One supplier covering every order means that history cannot answer the question later. |
6. Procedure
6A. Create the supplier
Do this before you start building the purchase order. The purchase order form offers no way to add a supplier, so leaving a part-built order to create one loses what you have entered.
Open Suppliers from the top navigation. It sits under More unless your organization has moved it.
Click Create Supplier at the top right.
Enter the supplier Name. This is the only detail that is genuinely required, and it is the only thing shown in the purchase order dropdown, so make it something you will recognize among others.
Set the Currency. It defaults to USD, and the choices are AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP, MXN, and USD.
Fill in whatever else you have to hand. Contact name, email, phone, website, payment terms, lead time in days, minimum order quantity, minimum order amount, tax ID, tax rate, your account number with them, and their default address are all optional, and all editable later.
Click Save.
6B. Select it on a purchase order
Open Purchase Orders from the top navigation.
Start a new purchase order, or open an existing draft.
Choose the new supplier in the Supplier field. The list is alphabetical by name and covers every supplier in the organization you are currently in.
Carry on with the warehouse, the line items, and the quantities as usual.
6C. Deal with the placeholder
The supplier named after your own organization can be renamed into something useful, which is better than leaving it sitting at the top of the list.
Open Suppliers and click the entry named after your organization.
Change the name, and fill in any details you have.
Click Save.
Purchase orders already raised against it follow the rename automatically, because they point at the record rather than at the text. If you would rather retire it than reuse it, note that it cannot be deleted once it has purchase orders or products attached, so renaming is usually the only route.
7. Verification
The new supplier appears in the Suppliers list, in alphabetical position.
Opening it shows its own products and purchase orders, both empty for a supplier you have just created.
The Supplier field on a new purchase order offers the new name.
After saving a purchase order against it, that order appears on the supplier's own page.
In a second organization, the list shows only that organization's suppliers, which confirms the lists are separate rather than missing.
8. Constraints and caveats
Creating or editing a supplier needs the Manage Suppliers permission. View Suppliers can see the list but not change it.
Supplier lists are per organization and are not inherited from a parent. A 3PL setting up a client organization starts from that client's placeholder, not from its own list.
A supplier that has purchase orders or linked products cannot be deleted. Rename it instead.
The purchase order form cannot create a supplier, so the order of operations matters. Create the supplier first.
Only the name appears in the purchase order dropdown. Two suppliers with similar names are indistinguishable at the moment of choosing.
Currency is set per supplier and defaults to USD, which is worth checking on the first purchase order rather than after it.
Every new organization is given the placeholder supplier automatically, so a brand new organization never looks like it needs supplier setup.
9. Worked example
A retailer runs two organizations, one for its own warehouse and one for the 3PL location it transfers stock to, and has been raising purchase orders in both for months without a supplier ever being added.
Observation | Reading |
|---|---|
Each organization holds exactly one supplier, each named after the organization itself. | Neither list has been added to. Both entries are the placeholder created automatically with the organization. |
Every purchase order in both organizations points at that single supplier. | Purchasing is being run correctly. The supplier field simply carries no information, so the history cannot show who anything came from. |
The account owner already holds Manage Suppliers in both organizations. | Not a permissions problem. The capability has been available the whole time. |
The question arises on the purchasing screens rather than the supplier screens. | The setting is being looked for where it is needed rather than where it lives, which is the whole of the difficulty. |
Nothing is misconfigured in this pattern and no data needs correcting. Rename each placeholder rather than deleting it, since both carry purchase order history. A supplier cannot be added from the purchase order screen where the need arises, which is why the path in section 6 starts somewhere else.