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A vendor is the canonical record for one outside party your workspace places orders with — a garment factory, a fabric mill, or an accessory supplier — together with the currency the vendor invoices you in, the payment terms you have agreed, and the contact your team works with. Every , , subcontract, , and picks a vendor from this directory — set the record up once and the right defaults flow into every document raised against it.

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What it is

A vendor record holds the identity of one outside party you do business with — name, country, contact, and the commercial defaults the platform pre-fills onto documents raised against the vendor. Each vendor is typed — see Vendor types — and the type pins where the vendor is selected downstream. The same record covers every relationship you have with that party. One factory you outsource cut-make-trim to, place fabric orders against, and pay invoices from is one vendor row in the directory, not three.

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Why it exists

An OEM business works with three kinds of outside party at once: the factories that cut, make, and trim finished garments; the mills that supply fabric; and the suppliers that supply trims and accessories. Each comes with its own invoicing currency, its own payment terms, and its own contact. Without a shared directory, every team enters the same vendor’s details on every document, and the details drift the moment a phone number changes. The vendor record consolidates one party into one row. Set it up once, pick it on every document, change a contact once and every future document reads the new value. The currency and payment-terms defaults travel with the record into the factory orders, purchase orders, and subcontracts you raise against the vendor, so the commercial basis stays consistent across the lifecycle.

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When it is used

  • At onboarding, before you load any material masters — a fabric or accessory record can only name a vendor that already exists.
  • Setting up a material master, where the fabric mill or accessory supplier is picked from this directory.
  • Raising a factory order, where the garment factory is picked from the directory. The factory order’s contract currency reads off the vendor’s Currency, and the factory order’s payment terms pre-fill from the vendor’s Payment terms.
  • Raising a purchase order, where the material supplier is picked from the directory.
  • Raising a subcontract, where the vendor doing the outsourced operation (embroidery, printing, washing) is picked from the directory.
You find the directory in the sidebar under Vendors.

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Dependencies

  • A workspace with its tenant base currency set during provisioning — every vendor’s invoice currency sits against that base for AP reporting and FX conversion. See Currency.
There are no upstream master records a vendor depends on; the vendor record is itself one of the entry points of the master-data layer. Vendors load before fabric and accessory masters — see the setup sequence.

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What depends on it

  • Each fabric master carries one vendor (the mill that supplies the fabric) — see Master catalogs.
  • Each accessory master carries one vendor (the accessory supplier) — see Master catalogs.
  • Each factory order is raised against one garment-factory vendor, and its contract currency and payment terms read off the vendor’s record — see Production.
  • Each purchase order is raised against one material-supplier vendor — see Production.
  • Each subcontract is raised against one vendor.
  • Each names the vendor it was sent to — typically the accessory supplier who would be filling the bulk trim purchase. See Trim Submissions.
  • Each vendor invoice is keyed to one vendor; the outstanding payables view on the vendor detail and the AP figures across orders and Finance read from this list — see Finance.
A vendor referenced by any of the above stays referenced by it forever, even after the vendor is deactivated. See Effect of changes.

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Fields

The vendor record groups by identity, type, contact, commercial defaults, and status.

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Identity

  • Vendor name — the party’s business name. Required, up to 200 characters. Shown on every downstream document the vendor appears on.
  • Vendor code — your workspace’s short code for the vendor. Optional, free text. Shown on the list card next to the name and on the detail-view identity block, so a teammate scanning the directory can recognise the vendor by the code your team already uses.
  • Country — the country the vendor operates in. Optional, free text.

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Type

  • Type — one of Garment Factory, Fabric Mill, or Accessory Supplier. Required. Set when the vendor is created and not editable after. The type determines where the vendor is picked downstream — see Vendor types.

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Contact

  • Contact name — your primary contact at the vendor. Optional.
  • Contact phone — the contact’s phone. Optional.
  • Contact email — the contact’s email. Optional.
  • Address — the vendor’s postal address. Optional, free text.

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Commercial defaults

  • Currency — the currency the vendor invoices you in. Required. Defaults to USD on a new record. Set when the vendor is created and not editable after; see Currency.
  • Payment terms — your default payment terms with this vendor, written in your own words (for example, Net 30, T/T 60 days). Optional, free text. Pre-fills onto factory orders and purchase orders raised against the vendor; the document carries its own payment-terms field, so you can still adjust it per document.

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Status

  • Active / Inactive — every vendor record carries an active/inactive state, mirrored on the list and at the top of the detail page. An inactive vendor stays linked to documents that already named it but is hidden from new picks.

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Vendor types

The three vendor types pin where the vendor is selected downstream and what the vendor is chosen for.
  • Garment Factory — the factory that runs cut-make-trim on finished garments. Picked on the (委外單); the factory order’s contract currency reads off the vendor’s Currency, and the contract’s payment terms pre-fill from the vendor’s Payment terms. A subcontract for a garment-side operation is also raised against a Garment Factory vendor.
  • Fabric Mill — the mill that supplies fabric. Picked on a fabric purchase order and named as the vendor on every fabric master you create.
  • Accessory Supplier — the supplier that supplies trims and accessories. Picked on a trim purchase order, named as the vendor on every accessory master, and selected as the recipient of a trim submission.
A vendor is one type. To re-type a vendor after the fact, deactivate the existing record and create a new one of the right type — every document that already references the original keeps the original on file.

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The factory-supplied sentinel vendor

Every workspace also carries one factory-supplied sentinel vendor that the platform seeds for you. It exists so a BOM line whose material is supplied by the garment factory itself — not bought from a separate mill or accessory supplier — has a vendor to name. The platform displays it as Factory (in Traditional Chinese, 工廠; in Simplified Chinese, 工厂) on every list card, detail view, and document it appears on, regardless of the raw name the record was seeded with. The sentinel is read-only — you do not edit, deactivate, or delete it, and it is not offered as a regular Garment Factory pick on a factory order. You work with it indirectly, by marking a BOM line as factory-supplied; the platform routes those lines to this sentinel for you. See BOM for the BOM-line side of the rule.

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Currency

Every vendor carries its own Currency — the currency the vendor invoices you in. The values offered on the dropdown come from the Currencies catalog — the workspace ships with USD, TWD, EUR, CNY, and JPY, and the default on a new record is USD. The vendor’s currency carries forward onto every document raised against the vendor:
  • The factory order’s contract currency is the vendor’s Currency — the per-style factory FOB and the payment-progress bar read in that currency.
  • A purchase order raised against the vendor reads the line prices in the vendor’s currency.
  • The vendor’s invoices are denominated in the vendor’s currency.
Your workspace also carries a separate tenant base currency, provisioned when your account is set up. The AP, cost analysis, and FX views convert each vendor’s currency back to base at the saved FX rate when they roll figures up across vendors. The vendor record itself sits in its own currency; the consolidated view sits in base. The full AP and FX behaviour lives on the Finance page.

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Business rules

  1. Type and Currency are set at create and not editable. Both pin the commercial basis the downstream documents read; changing either after the vendor has been used would silently shift every document raised against the vendor. To change either, deactivate the record and create a new one.
  2. A vendor must be of an appropriate type for the document it’s picked on. Factory orders pick Garment Factories; fabric purchase orders and fabric masters pick Fabric Mills; trim purchase orders and accessory masters pick Accessory Suppliers.
  3. An inactive vendor stays linked to existing references. Documents, masters, and invoices that already named the vendor keep the vendor on file; only new picks are hidden.
  4. The vendor record is the source for Vendor name, Country, Contact, and Payment terms on every new document raised against it. Updates to those fields flow into documents raised afterwards; documents already raised keep the values they captured at the time. See Effect of changes.

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Validations

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Active and inactive

The active/inactive state is a soft lifecycle for the vendor record:
  • An active vendor is offered on every downstream picker — fabric and accessory master forms, factory-order and purchase-order create, subcontract create.
  • An inactive vendor is hidden from new picks. Documents and master records that already named the vendor keep the vendor on file and stay fully functional — open them and the vendor still reads through. The vendor’s name still shows on its existing factory orders, purchase orders, subcontracts, invoices, and material masters.
Both the list view and the detail-page header show an Inactive badge on an inactive vendor.

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Effect of changes

  • Edit Vendor name, Country, Contact, or Payment terms. The updated values are read by every document raised against the vendor from that point on. Documents already raised — the open factory orders, purchase orders, and subcontracts you created before — keep the values they captured when they were raised. The AP and subcontract history on the vendor detail re-reads the current Vendor name on the next view.
  • Deactivate a vendor. Future pickers hide the vendor. Existing references — fabric and accessory masters, open factory orders, open purchase orders, subcontracts, and open vendor invoices — are unaffected, and the vendor’s detail page stays reachable through them.
  • Reactivate a vendor. The vendor returns to every picker on the next read; nothing on the existing references changes.
The platform does not let you reassign a fabric or accessory master, factory order, or invoice from one vendor to another after the fact. If you raised a document against the wrong vendor, fix the document — not the vendor.

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The vendor detail view

The vendor detail page reads as the record from the directory plus the activity that already references it. The page header shows the vendor’s Vendor name, the Type and Country together as a subtitle, and an Inactive badge if applicable. Three summary cards sit below the header:
  • Outstanding payables — a quick-glance total of what you owe this vendor today, drawn from the vendor’s unpaid invoices. This is an overview number, not the place to record a payment — the AP detail, the invoice list, and the payment record live on Finance.
  • Subcontracts — a count of the subcontracts the vendor is on.
  • Currency — the vendor’s Currency, with the Payment terms underneath as a reminder of the commercial defaults.
A Contact info section below the cards carries the country, the contact (name, phone, email), and the payment terms in one read-only block, with an Edit action that opens the same block as a form. The Vendor name is also editable here. Type and Currency are not editable on the detail — both are set at create and not changed afterwards (see Business rules). A Subcontract history table at the foot of the page lists every subcontract the vendor is on, with the subcontract’s number, type, delivery date, quantity, amount, and current state. Open a row to drill into the subcontract — the lifecycle and the document mechanics live on the subcontract itself, not on the vendor page.

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Best practices

  • Load your vendors before your material masters. A fabric or accessory record requires a vendor, so the directory has to be in place first. The Data Import wizard handles bulk-load.
  • Pick Type and Currency carefully — they aren’t editable. Both pin the commercial basis that every downstream document reads. If you make the wrong choice, deactivate the record and re-create.
  • Use one vendor record per real outside party. Duplicating the same factory under different rows splits the outstanding-payables view and the subcontract history across the duplicates, and silently halves the picture finance has of the relationship.
  • Write payment terms in plain words your team uses. The field is free text and pre-fills onto documents as you wrote it; consistent wording (e.g. Net 30, T/T 30 days) reads better on the documents themselves.
  • Deactivate rather than try to retire a vendor by deletion. An inactive vendor stays attached to the documents that already named it, which is the right outcome for the audit trail.