Vendors are third parties from whom you source your products. When ordering new stock, you will create purchase orders which you send to your vendors to fulfill.

Keeping your vendor records up to date is a key step for generating purchase orders in Inventory Planner, generating reports and accurate replenishment recommendations.

Where possible, Inventory Planner downloads vendor information from your connected system. For a full list of integrations and details that are pulled from every system, see our Integrations page.

For eCommerce systems that do not store vendor information, you must create and maintain your vendor and catalog data directly in Inventory Planner.

Shopify Users: What is the unknown vendor?

Important: By default, Inventory Planner syncs vendor information from your connected platform. If you would like to manage your vendors in Inventory Planner, contact the support team.

Note that if you choose to manage your vendor information in Inventory Planner, no vendor information will be synced from your platform.

Vendor list

To view the Vendor list in Inventory Planner, go to Catalog > Vendors.

From here, you can:

create vendors by clicking "+ New vendor"
manage vendor settings by clicking "settings" beneath each vendor
edit vendor/variant attributes by clicking the number of variants associated with each vendor

Note: If Inventory Planner syncs your vendors from another platform, you should create and manage your vendors on that platform. New vendors and changes will be synced to Inventory Planner.

You can also update several vendor settings directly in the main Vendors screen, including email addresses, currencies, default tax rates, discounts and minimum order quantities (MOQs) by using the gear icon to add or remove columns.

At the bottom of the page, you will see options to import and export vendors, allowing you to export your vendor data to a CSV/Excel document, or import it directly into Inventory Planner.

Creating new vendors in Inventory Planner

If your account is configured to manage vendors in Inventory Planner, you can create new vendors by clicking the "+ New vendor" button on the bottom left-hand side of the page.

You'll be taken to a screen prompting you to fill in the following:

Field	Description
Name	The vendor's name
Email	The vendor's email address, where the purchase order will be sent. Separate multiple email addresses with a comma.
Address	The vendor's physical address
Enabled	Toggle to enable or disable the vendor
Make variants replenishable	Click this button to change the replenishment status of all variants associated with the vendor to "replenishable"
Internal notes	Any notes on the vendor
Default periods	Set the vendor's lead time and days of stock for each warehouse. Click the "Update periods for variants" button to set the lead time and days of stock for all variant associated with the vendor to match.
Shipment method	The default shipping method used by the vendor
Payment terms	The vendor's default payment terms
Currency	The vendor's currency - purchase orders for this vendor will be placed in this currency
Default tax (%)	The vendor's default tax rate
Discount (%)	The vendor's default discount rate
Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) type	When creating purchase orders for the vendor, is the MOQ: Disabled For individual variants For parent products For purchase orders as a whole If so, set the minimum purchase quantity Learn more about MOQ types here
Minimum purchase budget	Set the minimum value of purchase orders for this vendor, if applicable
Default PO notes	Set the notes to appear on purchase orders for this vendor by default
PDF template	Set the default PDF template to use when emailing purchase orders to the vendor
Associated brands	Link brands to the vendor. Current and future variants for these brands will be automatically linked to the vendor.
Custom fields	Configure the default values for custom fields on the vendor's purchase orders

Once you've filled in all relevant fields, click "Create" at the bottom of the page.

Vendor settings

From Catalog > Vendors, click "settings" beneath the vendor whose settings you want to update.

You will be taken to the settings page for the individual vendor. Here, you can update all the fields mentioned in the previous section.

You will also see tabs for variants, bundles and assemblies. Clicking into those tabs shows you all the variants, bundles and assemblies associated with the vendor.

You can amend some vendor attributes on these screens, as well as associate new products with the vendor.

Customizing purchase orders for a specific vendor

You can create and customize purchase order templates in your settings. If you need to set a specific template for an individual vendor, you can do so in your vendor settings.

Scroll to the PDF template section and enable "Use custom template" by clicking on the toggle.

Then choose the default template to use when emailing purchase orders to the vendor.

Learn more about creating and customizing PDF templates here.

Bulk actions

Enable / disable vendors

By default, all vendors are enabled in Inventory Planner, which means that replenishment information is available for these suppliers on the purchase order calendar.

To see the calendar, go to Stock Orders and click Calendar at the bottom of the screen.

If you do not plan to order your products from a vendor and therefore do not want to see reorder reminders on the PO calendar, you can disable the vendor using bulk actions. Go to Catalog > Vendors, select the vendors using the checkboxes, then click Bulk Actions > Disable.

Set currency

If you order from a group of vendors using a different currency than the currency used in your Inventory Planner account, you can update their currencies using bulk actions.

Learn more about how different currencies are handled in Inventory Planner.

Select the vendors whose currency information needs to be updated using the checkboxes on the vendor list. Then, click Bulk Actions > Set Currency.

Choose the appropriate currency from the dropdown and click "Apply".