Adding and Managing Suppliers
How to set up suppliers in AskBiz POS — adding contact details, linking suppliers to products, and using supplier data to streamline reordering.
Key Takeaways
- Suppliers are the source records for all purchase orders — you must create a supplier before you can raise a PO to them.
- Linking products to a preferred supplier lets AskBiz suggest the right supplier when stock falls low.
- Supplier lead times recorded in AskBiz inform smarter minimum stock level calculations.
Finding the Suppliers section
Go to POS > Operations > Retail > Suppliers. This page lists all your current suppliers. For a new account, it's empty. Click Add Supplier to create your first one.
Creating a supplier record
Fill in the supplier's Company Name, Contact Name, Email, Phone Number, and Address. The Payment Terms field (e.g. 'Net 30', 'COD', '7 days') documents what terms you've agreed — this is for your reference and for any purchase order documents generated by AskBiz. Add your Account Number with that supplier if you have one; it appears on purchase orders so the supplier can identify you quickly. Click Save.
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Start for free →Linking products to a supplier
Open any product in Operations > Retail > Products and find the Supplier field. Select the supplier from the dropdown. You can also enter a Supplier SKU — the code your supplier uses for this product (which may differ from your internal SKU). When you raise a purchase order for this supplier, AskBiz pre-fills the order with your linked products and uses the supplier's SKU on the order document. A product can have multiple linked suppliers if you source it from more than one place — mark one as the Preferred Supplier.
Supplier lead times
On the supplier record, there's a Lead Time field (in days). This is the number of days between raising a purchase order and stock arriving. If your beverages supplier takes 5 working days to deliver and you typically sell 20 units per day, you need to reorder when you have at least 100 units remaining (5 days × 20 units). Recording the lead time accurately allows AskBiz to factor it into low-stock alert recommendations — rather than alerting when you're at zero, it alerts when you're at lead-time × daily sales rate.
Viewing supplier history
On any supplier's record page, click the Purchase Orders tab to see all previous orders placed with that supplier — including amounts, dates, and statuses (pending, received, partially received). This is useful for tracking spending by supplier, identifying your most and least relied-upon sources, and reviewing if delivery times match the stated lead time. Over time, this data supports better negotiation — if you've spent £50,000 with a supplier in the past year, that's a conversation starter for better pricing.