Buyers and suppliers
Two setup records drive most of purchasing: the buyer, who is allowed to spend money, and the supplier, who is paid for it. Getting them right up front avoids blocked POs, missing suggestions and invoices that don’t show up for payment.
Buyers
Section titled “Buyers”A buyer is a person who can place purchase orders. Buyers appear on POs, filter PO suggestions and are assigned to parts and part classes.
Material Management > Purchase Management > Setup > Buyer
- Enter a Buyer ID. It’s used in searches, filters and reports, and can’t be changed later, so pick a stable code rather than a person’s initials if people change roles often.
- Link the buyer to a person/contact record. If none exists, entering the name and details creates one.
- Set the PO Limit: the largest PO total this buyer can approve on their own. Zero means no limit.
- Choose the Approval Person. POs over the limit go to them for approval.
- Select Sync Name and Sync Email so the buyer record follows changes to the person/contact.
- Save.
Authorized users are system users allowed to buy on this buyer’s behalf. Add them from New > Authorized User. The buyer themselves must be a system user and be added as an authorized user of their own Buyer ID; anyone else you add can then buy as that buyer. The approval person also needs a user account.
If you use consolidated purchasing across companies, create matching buyer records in each company.
Suppliers
Section titled “Suppliers”Suppliers live in the Vendor table (the UI says supplier, the database says vendor; VendorNum is the
internal key and VendorID the code users see). Create them in Supplier Maintenance.
| Setting | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Group | Groups suppliers for reporting and defaults. Create groups in Supplier Group Maintenance first |
| Approved | Parts with approved-supplier rules can only be bought from approved suppliers. Approval can be by part, part class, operation or customer |
| Terms | Due dates and discounts on AP invoices |
| Payment Method | Which AP payment groups the supplier’s invoices appear in. See AP payments |
| Bank/Remit To | Needed for electronic payments. An EFT payment fails if the supplier has no bank record |
| Inspection Required | Sends receipts from this supplier to inspection |
| Tax Liability | Default tax for the supplier’s invoices |
Extra facts about a supplier that don’t warrant a UD field can go in Attributes, which work the same way for customers. See Customer part numbers and order data.
If you need supplier IDs assigned automatically, see Auto-number customer and supplier IDs.
“Company configuration does not allow this supplier price update”
Section titled ““Company configuration does not allow this supplier price update””Symptom: a receipt, or a REST call that updates a received price, fails with:
Company configuration does not allow this supplier price update.Cause: the receipt is changing the unit price from what’s on the PO, and the company isn’t set up to allow that.
Fix: in Company Configuration, go to Modules > Materials > Shipping Receiving and select Allow update of Supplier Price when Receiving. Set the percentage and monetary tolerances at the same time, and whether exceeding them should stop or warn.
Once allowed, the price entered at receipt is used for everything downstream: costing, invoicing, accounting and stock and job values.