---
title: How to add a supplier and record their terms
url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/purchasing/add-a-supplier
description: Add a supplier with a name and currency, fill in their terms, and link the Shopify brand names they supply.
---

> Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further.

# How to add a supplier and record their terms



A **supplier** is the company you actually pay. **Store › Suppliers** lists every one, with
their brands, lead time, payment terms, currency, minimum order and how many purchase orders
are still open with them. Start at <Ref to="purchasing" /> for how this fits together.

## Before you start [#before-you-start]

Adding and editing suppliers needs the supplier edit permission, which is its own dial rather
than general store write access. Without it the page reads and the buttons are absent.

## How do you add one? [#how-do-you-add-one]

**Add supplier**, which asks for a name and a currency and nothing else. Fill in the rest on
the supplier's own page when you have it.

That is deliberate. The moment you need a supplier is usually the moment you are writing an
order, and stopping to collect an address helps nobody.

You can also create one without leaving the order form: type a name the vendor picker does not
recognise and choose the &#x2A;*Create …** row. See <Ref to="purchasing/write-a-purchase-order" />.

Names have to be unique, ignoring case and surrounding spaces. Adding a duplicate tells you
which record already owns the name, and offers to restore it instead when the clash is with an
archived supplier.

## What should you fill in, and why? [#what-should-you-fill-in-and-why]

On the supplier's page: rep name, email, phone, website, address, notes, currency, payment
terms, lead time, revision window and minimum order.

Three of those change what the rest of Tideswell does, so they are worth doing properly.

* **Lead time** drives the suggested reorder quantities on the stock screen and how urgently
  an item gets flagged as low. A supplier who genuinely takes ninety days will be
  under-ordered every week until this is recorded. See
  <Ref to="inventory/find-what-to-reorder" />.
* **Revision window** is how many days before shipping they need your final changes, and it
  makes the revise-by date on an order fill itself in.
* **Currency** is copied onto each new order at the moment it is created, and never
  re-resolved afterwards.

**Minimum order** is recorded for reference. Nothing stops you writing an order below it, so
treat it as a note to yourself rather than a control.

## How do you link Shopify brand names to a supplier? [#how-do-you-link-shopify-brand-names-to-a-supplier]

At the top of the suppliers list there is an **Unmatched brands** tray, listing brand names
found on your Shopify products that are not tied to a supplier yet.

For each one you can &#x2A;*Attach to…** an existing supplier, **Create supplier** straight from
the brand name, or **Ignore** a brand you never want to be asked about again.

Doing this is what makes a purchase order typed with that brand name resolve to the right
supplier automatically. It is five minutes that saves a great deal of tidying later.

The tray disappears entirely when nothing is unmatched rather than sitting there as an empty
box. Attaching and detaching brands is done from the list, not from a supplier's own page.

## What is on a supplier's page? [#what-is-on-a-suppliers-page]

Their terms card showing what is in effect today, their full purchase order history with a
total per currency, their delivery record, and their brand chips.

You can also comment on a supplier and record a decision about why they are set up the way
they are, which is where "we moved to them because the last mill kept missing dates" should
live. See <Ref to="decisions" />.

## How do you stop buying from one? [#how-do-you-stop-buying-from-one]

**Archive** them. They stay attached to every past purchase order and only disappear from the
pickers you use when writing new ones.

Turn on **Show archived** to see them again, and restore one from there.

Archiving is not deleting, which matters: an order from three years ago still shows who it was
placed with.

## What if you buy one brand through another company? [#what-if-you-buy-one-brand-through-another-company]

Use **Bought through another supplier** to fold one supplier into another. Its purchase orders
and brand names move across and it is archived.

Before you confirm, a panel explains in plain English what happens, what you gain, what you
give up, and that it can be undone. Read it: the folded supplier stops having its own lead
time, contact, terms and currency, and the surviving supplier's are used instead, including in
the reorder maths.

**Undo merge** on the archived supplier's page reverses it, moving every order back. It
refuses outright rather than half-undoing if any of those orders has since been reassigned by
hand.