Setting up a supplier in Restock Ops: what each field actually does

Every purchase order in Restock Ops starts with a supplier, so the supplier record is the first thing you fill in and the thing you most rarely look at again. That makes it worth getting right once. Some of the fields on that page quietly change how the app behaves: what currency a PO is drafted in, which products the PO search offers you, what expected date a new order gets, how the reorder report decides who supplies a product. Others are stored and shown back to you, and nothing more. This post goes field by field and says which is which, so you know what you are buying with each minute of typing.

It is written from the current code, not from a wish list. Where a field looks like it should do something and does not, we say so.

Creating the record

The Suppliers page lists your active suppliers in a table and, below it, an Archived section once you have archived any. New supplier opens a short form with just four fields: Name, which is required, plus Email, Phone and Notes. Everything else lives on the supplier's own page, which opens as soon as the record is saved. The short form is deliberate: you can create a supplier from memory while a delivery is on the dock and fill in the trade terms later.

Name is the only field with a rule attached, and the rule is simply that it cannot be empty. There is no uniqueness check, so two suppliers called Acme are allowed. Give them distinguishing names, because the PO list and the receiving list show the supplier name and nothing else.

The fields that change behaviour

Lead time is the one most worth filling in because it feeds two things. The expected date on a PO is what the Receiving page shows in its Expected column, so a supplier with a lead time gets a date on every order without anyone typing it. And the reorder point calculation multiplies daily demand by lead time to find the stock you need to hold before a delivery arrives; a supplier with no lead time looks instant, which means the report under-orders for them.

Vendor associations are the second. The link between a Shopify vendor and a supplier is how the app knows that your Acme products come from Acme Trading Ltd rather than from the other two suppliers you buy from. Choose vendors from the list, which is built from the vendor field on your products, so you cannot type a vendor that does not exist. One vendor can belong to more than one supplier; if it does, the PO search works for both, but the reorder report has to pick one and which one it picks is not something you control. Link each vendor to a single supplier unless you have a reason not to.

The fields that are stored and shown, nothing more

Email, Phone and Address are contact details. The app displays them on the supplier page and does not send anything to them; there is no automatic PO email to a supplier today.

Payment terms (days) is stored and shown. Its help text describes it as setting the invoice due date, and that is the intention, but at the time of writing the invoice due date on a receipt is still entered by hand; the field does not fill it in. We would rather tell you than let you discover it when the first invoice falls due. Fill it in anyway so the information is in one place when the automation lands.

Minimum order value is stored and shown on the supplier page and is not enforced. A PO below the minimum is not blocked and shows no warning. The practical use is the same as Notes: a reminder for the person building the order. If a hard minimum matters to you, put it in Notes as well, because Notes is the field that is shown beside the PO.

The catalogue the supplier learns on its own

Below the fields, the supplier page has a catalogue table that you do not fill in by hand. Every time a PO for this supplier is marked ordered, the app remembers, for each line, the supplier's SKU, the unit cost, the tax percentage, and the date. The next time you add the same variant to a PO for this supplier, the line is prefilled from this memory: supplier SKU, cost and tax come from the last order, and the ordered quantity defaults to the item's remembered minimum order quantity if it has one, otherwise to one.

This is why the second PO to a supplier takes a fraction of the time of the first, and why it matters that the first one is filled carefully. A wrong cost on the first PO becomes the default on the second. You can correct a remembered value by changing it on the next PO; the newest order wins. The catalogue row also has room for a per-item minimum order quantity and case size, which the reorder report uses to round suggested quantities; the earlier post on supplier lead times and MOQs covers how those feed a suggestion.

Archiving instead of deleting

Suppliers cannot be deleted. Archive is the only option, and it does three things: the supplier disappears from the list of suppliers you can pick for a new PO, it moves into the Archived section of the Suppliers page, and nothing else changes. Existing purchase orders, receipts, the remembered catalogue and cost history are all kept, because the receipts behind your stock levels reference them. Restore puts the supplier back in the active list with everything intact.

A common pattern is a supplier you used for one seasonal run: archive them after the last delivery is received and restore them next year. Their catalogue and lead time are waiting.

A ten minute setup order

Create the supplier with Name, Email and Phone. Open the page and set Currency if it differs from the shop's, Lead time in days using the supplier's quoted figure plus your own receiving buffer, and Vendor associations for every Shopify vendor they supply. Put MOQ rules, discount thresholds and any minimum order value into Notes so they appear beside the PO. Leave Address, Payment terms and Minimum order value for later or fill them for your own records. Then build the first PO carefully, because its costs and quantities become the defaults for the rest of the year.

If you are starting out with Restock Ops, set up the suppliers before running the first reorder report. A report run before vendors are linked will show every product as unassigned, which is correct but not useful.

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