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Vendors

Your vendor directory is the single record for every company or person you buy from. Each vendor holds contact details, a category, a status, an optional credit limit, tax ID, and default payment term — and is shared across bills, vendor credits, purchase orders, vendor contracts, and inventory. Because so much of accounts payable references the vendor, keeping the list clean and de-duplicated is what keeps AP reporting and approval assignment accurate.

Key capabilities

  • Vendor records with search, a status filter, tags, and page-by-page browsing, plus summary cards (Total Vendors, Active, Inactive / Blocked, With Credit Limit)
  • Duplicate detection by fuzzy name, email, and tax ID before you create
  • Email uniqueness enforced on create (a second vendor with the same email is rejected)
  • Status tracking — active, inactive, or blocked
  • Credit limits shown in dollars
  • Category, tax ID (EIN/VAT), website, address, phone, and free-text notes
  • Default payment term applied to new bills for that vendor
  • Multiple contacts per vendor with roles and a primary flag (add, edit, delete from the expanded row)
  • Import CSV with a downloadable template, per-row validation, and duplicate skipping; Export to Excel
  • Bill request links: send a vendor or contractor a link to submit an invoice; it arrives in your Bill Inbox as a draft to confirm
  • Approval routing per vendor: choose who approves that vendor's bills before the amount tiers (needs the AP Automation add-on)
  • Deletion that preserves the vendor on existing bills and invoices
  • Cross-business counterparty registry linkage for firm-wide analytics
  • A default ship-from location that purchase orders and the Supply Chain Map use; reorder sizing assumes a 14-day vendor lead time

How it works

Creating a vendor checks for duplicates, links it to the global counterparty registry, and makes it available everywhere AP references vendors.

flowchart TD
  new["New Vendor / CSV row"] --> dup{"Duplicate check"}
  dup -->|"email already exists"| reject["Rejected / skipped"]
  dup -->|"unique"| create["Create vendor"]
  create --> registry["Link to counterparty registry"]
  registry --> use["Used by bills, POs, contracts, credits"]

How to use it

  1. Open Vendors under the Contacts sidebar group (also linked from Accounts Payable).
  2. Click New Vendor and enter at least a name and email; add phone, address, tax ID, website, category, and notes as needed.
  3. As you type, DayZero surfaces potential duplicates by name, email, and tax ID — review them before saving.
  4. Set a status (Active, Inactive, Blocked) and an optional credit limit and default payment terms.
  5. Expand a vendor's row to manage its contacts — add people with roles (e.g. Sales, Accounting) and mark one primary.
  6. To import many at once, click Import CSV: download the template, fill it in, and upload (duplicate emails are skipped). Export downloads your list.
  7. To collect invoices from a vendor, open Bill request links, click New link, and copy the URL. It is shown only once, can expire (7, 30, or 90 days, or never), and can be revoked.
  8. To control who approves a vendor's bills, expand the row and use Add route under Approval routing.

Pro tips

  • Email is the duplicate key on create — a vendor whose email matches an existing one is rejected outright, so use the duplicate checker (which also compares name and tax ID) before forcing a new record.
  • Deleting a vendor hides it from pickers but keeps it on historical bills and invoices, so past reports stay intact.
  • If you may work with a vendor again, set status to Inactive or Blocked instead of deleting.
  • Bill request links submit a PDF or image (up to 10 MB) and flag possible duplicates in the draft's description; nothing posts until you confirm the bill.
  • Set a default payment term per vendor so new bills inherit the right due date instead of you setting it every time.
  • Categories power year-end spend analysis — assign them consistently (e.g. Raw Materials, Services) from day one.
  • Imports cap at 1,000 rows and require Name and Email columns; bad rows are reported individually rather than failing the whole file.

In-depth guide

Status rules

What each status means in practice:

  • Active — available on new bills, POs, and orders.
  • Inactive or Blocked — hidden from routine pickers; existing documents unchanged.

Contacts

Each vendor can have many contacts (name, email, phone, role, primary flag, notes), managed from the vendor's expanded row. Contacts are separate from the vendor's own email and are useful for routing remittance, POs, or disputes to the right person.

Duplicate detection

How DayZero guards against duplicate vendors:

  • Pre-create check — before you save, DayZero compares name (fuzzy), email, and tax ID against existing vendors and surfaces likely duplicates.
  • Create path — additionally hard-blocks an exact email collision.
  • Import CSV — skips any row whose email already exists (in the file or the system) instead of erroring.

Counterparty registry

New vendors are linked to a global counterparty registry (auto-created if needed); if linkage can't complete, vendor creation still succeeds. The registry enables cross-business analytics for advisory firms.

Related features & AP approval

Vendors are the anchor for the whole AP path:

  • Bills — reference a vendor.
  • Vendor Contracts — attach to a vendor and drive the contract-match signal.
  • Vendor Credits — reduce what a vendor is owed.
  • Purchase orders / inventory — share the same vendor record.
  • AP approval — the workflow needs the bill's vendor to find an active contract or an approval route — see AP Approval Workflow and Vendor Contracts.

Edge cases

  • A bill can briefly exist without a vendor, but it won't contract-match or advance through approval until one is set.
  • Changing a vendor's status to Blocked does not retroactively change existing bills — it only affects new selection/order eligibility.
  • Deleted vendors are excluded from search and pickers but remain available for historical reporting.