Vendors: adding, checking and approving them

A vendor must be approved before it can be asked for prices or given a PO. Getting there has three steps, shown on each vendor's page under Next steps.

1. Add the vendor

• Vendors → Add vendor: legal name (as on its GST certificate), trade name, SAP vendor code, GSTIN and PAN (or the reason it has no GSTIN: unregistered, overseas), Udyam (MSME) details, email, phone, address. The GSTIN is checked as you type, and its state comes from its first two digits.
• Or Vendors → Import from Excel with a column per field. Vendors already in your list (same GSTIN, PAN or name) are named, not added twice.

2. Its documents

What your company asks for (Settings → Rules, "require ..."): by default the GST certificate, the PAN card and a bank letter or cancelled cheque. Your company can also ask for the MSME (Udyam) certificate of a vendor that gives a Udyam number (off at first; the 45-day payment rule rests on it).

Your company may also ask for a number of documents in all (Settings → Rules, "minimum documents"; 0 at first, meaning only the required ones). The required ones count; each kind counts once (a renewed GST certificate is still one), and each "other" document counts on its own, so with a minimum of 4 a vendor with GST, PAN and bank proof verified needs one more: an MSME or ISO certificate, or another paper. The Required documents card says how many more.

• The vendor uploads them on the vendor portal (Invite to the vendor portal), or you upload them on its page: Documents → Upload a document: the kind, the file, its number and valid-until date.
• Every file is virus-checked first. Then someone checks it against the vendor's details: Verify, or Reject with the reason (the vendor is told). When your company works with "four eyes", the one who uploaded cannot verify.
• A document past its valid-until date counts as missing again; SourcePro warns before it expires.
• A vendor that also works with another company on SourcePro may give you a copy of a document it handed in there (the same PAN, verified there, still valid). It arrives like any upload: virus-checked, then yours to verify, and the vendor's history says it was reused. You never see who the other company is, and nothing of their check comes with it. Settings → Rules, "A vendor may give a copy of a document it handed in to another customer", turns it off: the vendor then hands in a new file.

3. Approval

With every document verified, Send for approval on the Approval card. Your company's vendor policy (Settings → Approvals → Vendors) names who approves; they decide in Tasks. Once approved, the vendor shows This vendor is approved and can be asked for prices.

The Approval card shows who will approve, in order, from the start, while the documents are still being checked, with what it waits for ("It can be sent once its required documents are verified"). The last of the Next steps says it too ("Then Purchase head, then Finance"), and once the vendor is sent, where it waits now ("With Finance, level 2 of 3"). If your company has not set who approves vendors, the card says so, and that the admin sets it in Settings → Approvals.

Statuses

What you keep about it

If your company keeps attributes about vendors (an ISO 9001 date, a BIS licence number), the vendor's page has an Attributes card: Edit to change them. They are part of the vendor, so they wait while the vendor is with the approvers, like its categories. See Materials for how your admin defines them.

The vendor portal

Invite to the vendor portal sends the vendor's contact an invitation. On the portal they upload documents, answer RFQs and POs. See The vendor portal.

Its record

Each vendor's page shows its contacts, categories, documents, approval history, and its record: RFQs asked and answered (and in time), POs won and how much, prices against the last ones. Reports → Vendors' record compares them all.