Vendors & Suppliers (Pilot)
Vendors & Suppliers gives your team one directory for the wholesalers, material yards, rental houses, subcontract supply partners, and specialty vendors you buy from during day-to-day work. Use it to keep account numbers, contacts, payment terms, lead times, and preferred supplier status easy to find before a job gets delayed by missing parts.
Pilot availability: Existing pilot accounts can keep using Vendors & Suppliers. New installs and re-enables are paused.
When to use this
Use Vendors & Suppliers when your office or field team needs a shared supplier list instead of personal phone contacts, spreadsheets, or old invoices. It is especially useful when dispatchers, estimators, and technicians need to know who carries a part, which vendor is preferred, and how much lead time to expect.
Before you start
- Confirm your account already has Vendors & Suppliers enabled. New installs and re-enables are paused during the pilot.
- Decide who can add, edit, suspend, reactivate, or mark vendors inactive. Most teams limit this to owners, office managers, purchasing leads, or inventory managers.
- Gather the first supplier records you want available: company name, trade, category, contact info, account number, payment terms, lead time, and notes.
How to use Vendors & Suppliers
Open Vendors & Suppliers from the main navigation. The page shows supplier summary cards, status/category tabs, and the vendor table or empty state. Use the tabs to focus on preferred vendors, active suppliers, parts vendors, materials vendors, or inactive records.
- Select Add Vendor to open the form.
- Enter the vendor Company and optional Primary Contact.
- Add phone, email, website, and the vendor's address. The address fields use structured entry — start typing and Google Places autocomplete will suggest the full address, filling in street, city, state, and postal code automatically.
- Choose a Category such as Parts, Materials, Tools, Rentals, Services, Subcontractors, or Other.
- Add the vendor's Trade, Account #, Payment Terms, and Lead Time (days).
- Set the starting Status. Use Preferred for go-to suppliers, Active for normal suppliers, Suspended for a temporary pause, and Inactive when the supplier should leave day-to-day use.
- Add notes such as pickup rules, after-hours contact details, warranty process, or order cutoff times.
- Select Add Vendor in the form to save the supplier.
After vendors exist, use the row actions to Prefer, Unprefer, Suspend, Reactivate, or Mark inactive. Use Suspend for a temporary pause. Mark inactive keeps the vendor and purchase history on record, moves the vendor to Inactive, and lets you reactivate it later.
Settings
Open Vendors & Suppliers → Settings from the page header. Vendor defaults control the values ToolbagCRM applies when someone creates a new supplier and leaves those fields unchanged.
Recommended setup flow:
- Set Default payment terms (net days) so new vendors start with the most common payment term, such as Net 30.
- Set Default lead time (days) to match the normal supplier turnaround your team expects.
- Choose the Default category your team adds most often, such as Parts, Materials, Services, or Subcontractors.
- Click Save changes.
These defaults do not overwrite vendor-specific details. If a supplier has its own terms, lead time, or category, edit that vendor record directly.
Tips
- Review your supplier directory whenever your buying process changes. Keep payment terms, lead times, account numbers, preferred status, and pickup notes current so dispatchers, estimators, and technicians can make purchasing decisions without checking old invoices or personal contact lists.
- Keep preferred status meaningful. If every supplier is preferred, technicians lose the signal.
- Use categories and trades consistently so office staff can quickly find the right supplier for the job type. Put labor partners in Subcontractors when they are hired outside companies rather than W-2 team members.
- Record account numbers and payment terms before field users need them during an urgent job.
- Add notes for cutoff times, delivery windows, special-order rules, and after-hours pickup processes.
- Use Mark inactive when a supplier should leave day-to-day use but its purchase history must remain available. Use Suspend for a temporary pause.
- Use the address autocomplete when adding vendors — typing the street number and name fills in city, state, and postal code so addresses stay consistent across records.
Troubleshooting
Search returns no results
Search matches against company name, trade, category, and status. Try a shorter search term or switch to the All tab to remove the status filter.
Add Vendor button does not save
The Company field is required. If you leave it blank, the Add Vendor button stays disabled. Fill in the company name before saving. Company names are limited to 200 characters, and other fields have their own limits (phone 50, email 200, notes 4 000).
A vendor is missing from a tab
Each tab filters by a specific status or category. The Active tab shows both Active and Preferred vendors, and the Inactive tab shows both Suspended and Inactive vendors. Switch to All to see every supplier regardless of status.
A suspended vendor cannot be used on a new purchase
Suspended vendors are intentionally excluded from new work. If the supplier should be used again, open the row actions and select Reactivate. Use Mark inactive for a vendor you no longer plan to use; the record and purchase history stay available, and the vendor can still be reactivated later.
Error loading vendors
If the page shows an error state instead of the vendor list, click Try Again to reload. This usually resolves temporary connection issues. If the problem persists, ask an administrator to confirm that the pilot remains enabled for your account; do not disable it because re-enables are paused.