By using this website, you agree to our Terms of Use (click here)
Background: I recently started at a new position at a company that uses Acumatica, but unfortunately, they don’t use it very well, or to its fullest potential. The primary issue for me is our vendor system.
Problem: We currently have 15k+ vendors in the system with unique names. Location and class have not been used to categorize or organize vendors. I’m tasked with the job of cleaning up the vendor system, but honestly, I don’t know where to start. I know we will need to use class and location to get rid of duplicate vendors, e.g., using FedEx but having multiple offices set up rather than just having one primary with different locations. But I’m not sure how I can aggregate the information.
Questions: If I wanted to put all of our FedEx’s together, is there any way to merge the history from the other vendors? Do you have any other suggestions as to how I could organize this vendor system apart from utilizing location and class?
Additionally, I want to run an analysis of all of our vendor spending on different GL’s. How would you recommend me pulling vendor information across the company to present this information?
- How much are we spending and with who?
- How many vendors are in each spending range? E.g. 0-$100, 101-1000, 1001-5000, etc..
- Top spenders?
- Top # of transactions?
- And other similar data inquiries.
Any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated. Unfortunately, my experience and knowledge of Acumatica are minimal, so navigating this issue is quite difficult.
Hey Patrick,
1. Regarding merging, unfortunately it's not possible to merge Vendors, you have to just pick one to move forward with and make the others Inactive. It's a popular request though. I recommend adding your vote and a comment about why you want the feature to this idea: https://feedback.acumatica.com/ideas/ACU-I-872
2. Regarding Vendor Class and Vendor Locations, Vendor Class is good for putting Vendors in categories so you can set default settings for them and report on them together. Vendor Locations are good for your FedEx example where there is one Vendor that you are purchasing from in multiple locations. Note though when you use one Vendor with multiple Vendor Locations, those Vendor Locations should share the same Remittance Address.
3. Regarding the analysis, I would create a Generic Inquiry based on the APTran table so you get a list of all AP Bill Lines, including their GL Accounts, Amounts, etc. For any Top analysis, I recommend using a Dashboard Widget. For analyzing spending ranges, checkout this post (click here).
You need to download your existing vendor data into a spreadsheet, cleanup the sheet as needed and then import the sheet as new Locations to existing vendors. This is not something I would recommend someone new to Acumatica doing. The download part is simple enough with GI, but the import back as new locations to existing vendors requires Import Scenarios and you need some degree of expertise with Acumatica to get that working. You should do the Acumatica training on Open Uni ASAP.