Most shop owners keep their suppliers in their phone contacts and their heads. That works until you're away and a staff member needs to reorder, or until you want to know everything you buy from one distributor.
The Suppliers page keeps the businesses you buy from in one place, with their details, and links each of them to the products they supply.
Adding a supplier
Go to Suppliers and press Add supplier. Only the name is required.
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Name | The business you buy from |
| Code | Your own short code for them, if you use one |
| Contact person | Who you actually deal with there |
| Phone and email | How to reach them |
| Address | Where they are, for pickups and returns |
| Payment terms | How they expect to be paid, such as cash on delivery or 14 days |
| Lead time | How many days a delivery takes after you order |
| Minimum order value | The smallest order they'll accept, if they have one |
The minimum order value has its own currency. That's for suppliers you pay in a different currency from the one you sell in, such as an importer you pay in dollars.
Search your suppliers by name from the same page, and edit one whenever their details change.
Linking products to a supplier
When you add or edit a product, pick its supplier.
It's a small step that pays off in three places:
- On the Suppliers page, View products shows everything you buy from one supplier.
- On the Products page, you can filter by supplier.
- When goods have to go back, Tabs already knows who they came from.
Using it to reorder
Say your drinks distributor delivers on Thursdays and wants your order by Tuesday.
On Tuesday, open Products and filter by that supplier. Then look at what's low. In a minute you have the list of what to order from them, without walking the shelves. If their minimum order is ₦150,000 and you're only short on ₦90,000 of goods, you can see that too and top up with fast movers.
Set a reorder level on those products and the low stock list does half of this for you.
Sending goods back
When a delivery arrives damaged, or an item turns out to be faulty, you don't want it sitting in your stock as if it could be sold.
- Open the product.
- Select the item or items going back.
- Choose Return to supplier.
- Pick the supplier and say why.
The item stops being sellable straight away, and the return is kept in its status history with your reason. When the replacement arrives or the matter is settled, choose Put back on sale.
You need at least one supplier saved before you can do this, since Tabs asks which one the goods are going to.
This is different from a customer bringing something back to you. That's a return on an order, covered in payments, receipts and returns.
Deleting a supplier
Deleting a supplier removes them from your list. Do this for suppliers you've stopped using so the list stays short and useful.
Who can do what
Suppliers have their own permissions for viewing, adding, editing and removing. Someone who can't view suppliers won't see the Suppliers page or the supplier filter on Products. Set this under roles.
Many owners let managers view suppliers and keep adding and editing for themselves, since supplier terms are often something you'd rather not share widely.