All posting in payables is directed towards specific vendors. Posting of purchase orders or invoices is dependent upon the existence of a matching vendor record.

To set up your vendors, navigate to [a] Payables, then [a] Vendor Entry.

In our demo set of books we have 67 vendors set up.

Vendor Details

We track a number of details on each vendor.

Actions

The following actions are available:

  • A’dd a vendor record to the applicable company.
  • ‘C’hange a vendor record for updates to any non-key vendor information.
  • ‘D’elete function is restricted only to vendors with no invoices or P/O’s posted to them.
  • ‘H’istory action exists to move a vendor from current to history and vice versa. Only vendors with zero balances may be moved to ‘History’. In order to update a vendor in ‘History’ is it necessary to move the vendor to ‘C’urrent.
  • ‘I’nquire action allows the location of a vendor record by vendor code.
  • ‘R’enumber action exists to renumber and/or merge all vendor records including invoices, P/O’s and cheques.
  • ‘V’iew action will take you to the list tab – on the list tab you can find any vendor record by using the filter fields at the top of the tab.
Fields

Vendor – is a key field and may not be modified, it is entered as the lst 3 characters or the first and second words in the vendor name. It may not contain blanks.

name is a key field and cannot be blank. The name field is used in the printing of vendor information on cheques, purchase orders and reporting Accounts Payable information.

The vendor address is used in the printing of cheques and purchase orders.

  • address1
  • address2
  • City
  • Prov – must be valid 2 digit province/state code – if this field is blank country is available
  • Country –defaults from province/state entry – blank Prov code allows modification of this field
  • postal code – should be A9A9A9 for Canada and 99999 or 99999-9999 for USA.
  • office phone –must be a 7 or 10 digit number (which includes area code)

fax – must be a 7 or 10 digit number (which includes area code)

contact phone, contact fax and contact are memo fields and used for reference only.

email –if present this would contain the vendor’s email address and is used for reference only.

web site –if present this would contain the vendor’s web site and is used for reference only.

employee – Payroll subcontract style employees and vendors for employee RRSP contributions use this field to identify the associated employee. Employee purchases don’t use this field. They are directed at a specific G/L account set up for that purpose.

RRSP account – If an employee number is entered, this field identifies their RRSP account. Used for printing cheques to vendors.

cheque advice – is a memo field only.

WCB No – is a memo field only but significant for P/R subcontract style employees.

CRA subcontractor? – ‘Y’es or ‘N’o – this flag determines whether the vendor is to be included in the ‘Subcontractor Payment Report’ (this report appears under A/P Cheque Reports).

CRA business no– CCRA business number (aka GST registration number) – used in cheque reports and subcontract payments for selected vendors.

default cost type – must be one of ‘L’ abour, ‘M’aterial, ‘E’quipment, ‘S’ubcontract . The Cost Type is used as the default during A/P Invoice Entry. The cost type should correspond to what is available through the job costing (J/C Centre entry). This field can be changed as required.

intercompany G/L – Used in A/R intercompany billings when the vendor is set up to send or receive payments between subsidiary companies. This account is used to zero out payments and move expenses and revenue directly to the balance sheet.

restrict access? – If information related to a vendor is sensitive or confidential set this flag to ‘Y’. When you do that, this vendor will only be included in reports run by users with access to restricted information. Both vendors and employees can be flagged as restricted access only.

T&M candidate? – ‘Y’es to this option passes vendor invoices to the materials component of the Time and Material component for posting to the appropriate job – not currently used.

extract candidate? – must be ‘Y’es or ‘N’o – used in Accounts Payable invoice reports to restrict selection of vendor invoices for extraction. Primarily used to screen intercompany traffic billed in the source companies.

active? – must be ‘Y’es – vendor is active or ‘N’o. Invoices may not be posted against inactive vendors.

last update – date the vendor record was last updated – populated by the system

Electronic Funds Transfer

You can pay vendors with direct deposit. The first step in this process is to record their banking information.

[a] Payables | [a] Vendor Entry

EFT institution, branch, and account – if monies are to be paid to the vendor through an electronic funds transfer it is necessary that the Institution, branch, and account fields are completed.

EFT email – this field is available only if the EFT institution, branch and account fields have been populated. An email address in this field will allow the Accounts Payable group to email EFT deposit slip confirmations to the Vendors.

Pay Group

You can assign vendors a pay group. This allows you to organize payments by group. It is also a selection parameter in a number of Invoice Reports.

To set up pay groups, navigate to [a] Payables, then [u] Set Up, then [a] Pay Group Entry.

In our demo data, we show examples of pay groups you might find useful. For instance, you may want to run all EFT payments at the same time, so you only have one file to submit to the bank.

The Details for pay group are just a description.

Region

Vendors can be assigned to different regions within a geographic area. Many reports are selected and grouped by region.

A/P Invoices:

purchase – Life to date purchase. This field is incremented during A/P Invoice entry and A/R intercompany invoicing

payment – Life to date payments. This field is incremented during A/P cheques. The net_out plus hbk_out should equal purchase minus payment.

net outstanding – Net outstanding balance. This field is incremented by addition of invoices and A/R intercompany invoicing and decremented by issue of cheques.

holdback outstanding – Holdback outstanding balance. This field is incremented by addition of invoices and decremented by issue of cheques. It is also manipulated by the holdback ’K’ release action in A/P invoice entry which reverses prior O/S holdback items and adds new net O/S items with GST.

Purchase Orders:

p/o issued – Life to date purchase orders issued. This field is incremented during A/P P/O entry

p/o invoiced – Life to date purchase orders invoiced. This field is incremented during A/P Invoice entry for invoices tied to P/Os

p/o outstanding – Purchase order outstanding balance. This field is incremented during A/P P/O entry and decrement during A/P Invoice entry for invoices tied to P/Os. This value should be the difference between po_issued and po_invoiced.

Vendor Branches

In our example above, we show the vendor record for Acklands Grainger. It gives us the contact information for their head office in Ontario. We’ll be dealing with one or more of their local branches, depending on how far afield our work takes us. Record as many branches as you need on the Branches tab.

We’ve added their Nanaimo branch.


[a] Payables | [a] Vendor Entry

And their Victoria Branch.

[a] Payables | [a] Vendor Entry

We’ll be able to reference the specific branch on invoices and purchase orders.

Actions

The following actions are available:

  • ‘A’dd a vendor branch record to the applicable company.
  • ‘C’hange a vendor branch record for updates to any non-key vendor information.
  • ‘D’elete function is restricted only to vendors with no invoices or P/O’s posted to them.
  • ‘I’nquire action allows the location of a vendor record by vendor code.

FIELDS

branch id – key field, populated by the system in sequential order.

display order – numeric, up to 2 digits – must be present on an Add action – determines the order the entry will appear in the drop down list of branches for both Requisition and P/O Entry

name is a key field and cannot be blank. The name field will appear in the drop down list.

  • address1
  • address2
  • City
  • Prov – must be valid 2 digit province/state code – if this field is blank country is available
  • Country –defaults from province/state entry – blank Prov code allows modification of this field
  • postal code – should be A9A9A9 for Canada and 99999 or 99999-9999 for USA.


contact name, contact phone, fax, and contact email are memo fields. You can choose to include them in custom email templates.

active? – must be one of ‘Y’es, branch is active or ‘N’o. Inactive branches will not appear in the drop down lists.

Supplier Types

When you are sending out RFQs, you can narrow the list of vendors down by the type of materials they supply. You can customize the types of supplies by navigating to [a] Payables, then [u] Set Up, then [b] Supplier Type Entry.

We’ve set up several types in our demo database.

To set up the types of materials a vendor supplies, click on the Types tab and enter the ‘C’hange action.

Acklands Grainger is rentals, so we’ll assign them that type.

Books

The last tab shows which sets of books this vendor is active in, and any outstanding amounts in those other books.

If I go into another set of books and add Acklands Grainger, it pre-fills the fields that identify the vendor. The financial amounts are not copied over, as they pertain only to the current set of books.

The books tab shows the vendor is active in two sets of books.