Overview of Vendors with the Non-Stock Requisition

The Non-Stock Requisition module allows the users to create new Vendors and new Vendor Addresses for both new and existing Vendors.

The Vendor Maintenance module allows Vendors to have multiple order and payment addresses. Currently on the Alpha, each Vendor can have one order address and one payment address. To accomplish this we combined all the vendors per fiscal year into one set of table within Compass. An import function has already been ran against the data to convert the information into the Compass tables. Additionally, the functionality to keep Compass and the Alpha in sync has already been implemented, so changes made to vendors using the Non-Stock Requisition screen will also get updated on the Alpha. Currently the Vendor data is only used in the Non-Stock Requisition module, but will be incorporated into other modules as needed.

The import attempted to avoid duplicates based on tax id number and then name (i.e. if the tax id number matches a vendor already imported, use that vendor. If the tax id number does not match, try to use the vendor name to find a match). While this approach did cut down on obvious duplicates, due to different spellings, number of spaces and other characters, there are still vendors that look to be the same vendor. Due to the probability of there still being duplicate vendors, there is a menu option in the Vendor Maintenance module under Tools -> Combine Vendors. To get more information on how the Vendor Maintenance Module works, see the Vendor Maintenance User Documentation.

Both the Vendor and the Vendor Address have a status. Valid status values are "Active", "Inactive" and "UserEntered". These status values will be used by other modules within Compass to determine if a Vendor/Vendor Address can be used. Only Active Vendors/Vendor Addresses can be used by other modules.

The status of "UserEntered" will be used with the NS Requisition screen when a user enters a new Vendor or Vendor Address while entering a requisition. The process of how a Vendor will go from "UserEntered" to "Active" will happen during the Non-Stock Requisition Approval process.

Contact information is kept for both the Vendor and the Vendor Address. This enables the user to define unique contact information (name, phone number and email address) for the Vendor, the Order Address and the Payment Address, if applicable. If the contact information is the same regardless of the address, entering the contact information with the Vendor is sufficient. If the contact information for the address is different than the main contact defined with the vendor, then entering the contact information with the address information is required.

The contact information will be used along with the vendor in other Compass modules. If a contact exists for the address, that will be contact information used. If there is no contact information connected to an address, the contact information for the vendor will be used if defined.