AP10 and PO10 Vendors, are they needed to order?

I just had a question on adding vendors to the AP vendor master and PO10. Is it really necessary to add a vendor if you may only order from them a handful of times? Maybe 5 times a year or less. I ask because it seems like a lot of data clutter that may not be needed. Any thoughts? Best practices?

Thanks.

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Comments

Legacy Contributor

I don't know if there's a best practice.

We like having the PO10 regardless as the AP contact information may not be the same as customer service. PO10 also lets us store account numbers and alter comments and issue methods - which is the sort of info you need more for your infrequent vendors than the daily ones - whose contact info the buyer can rattle off from memory.

jon-athey

What Kat said. Even though you might not use them often the information in PO10 is more specific purchasing. It's our policy to add the PO10 record and PO10.2 as well for every AP10 record if we will be issuing POs.

Legacy Contributor

This is helpful information. It seems that we are building a PO vendor for each AP vendor. This gives us something to look into.

Legacy Contributor

Our AP actually uses the vendor status flags I(Inactive) D (Non-PO) and A (PO) so we "only" worry about the A status vendors. So the power company and agencies are D and not in PO10, but the med-surg suppliers are A and in PO10.

So yes, we only build PO10 for PO Vendors.

Legacy Contributor

Thank you Kat. This helps. We should be able to clean things up with this.

Legacy Contributor

We too add a PO10 record for any vendor that Purchasing will issue PO's to. However, if AP does not notify Purchasing of the vendor add, & if the default buyer is left blank, our Crystal Report that we use to print approved requisitions (RQ10, no RQC yet) will not pick up the requisition. Looking to learn process of exchange of info from AP to Purchasing, or if there is an ISNULL formula to rectify Crystal Report so that req will print, then we can update PO10. Thanks.

dechevar

I would also question whether these vendors need to be set up or I transactions could be done with a PCard. De-clutter your vendor master and perhaps increase your PCard rebate by utilizing it for these one off purchases.

giovanni-vitale

Do you add employees as vendors or do you use a separate T & E system?

Legacy Contributor

To djechevarr - not exactly sure what a PCard is.

To Debbie - We do add employees as vendors, but designate those by beginning vendor numbers with 999... & I believe they have their own vendor class.

jon-athey

We add employees to AP10 for expense reimbursements and patients for refunds. Each has their own vendor class. If a vendor add is PO related the add is initiated by Purchasing. We have an online form that is only accessible by AP and Purchasing.

jreese

We have an on-line vendor add process. If the request is initiated by our Materials Management area then the vendor is created in AP10 and PO10, along with multiple locations on AP10.2 and PO10.2. If the request is initiated by AP then the vendor is only created on AP10. For patient refunds, we run those through CB using a single vendor setup in AP for just processing patient refunds.

Legacy Contributor

Our vendor add requests are initiated by the end users, not Purchasing. We've decided to first clean up our vendor classes (many are currently under Misc), then use Process Flow to email Purchasing any time a vendor is added with certain classes being the trigger. We are also going to add "Reason for Request" to the vendor add form to help us better class vendors going forward. Thanks.

jon-athey

I'll clarify that the new vendor request does come from the end user but Purchasing initiates the add to Lawson by submitting this online form.

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