Clients & Profits Online User Guide
Vendors are suppliers from whom you purchase goods and services through Accounts Payable
The vendor file contains every vendor you’ll ever do business with, including account number, name, address, and some account information.
Anyone who bills you with an invoice would be a vendor, especially freelancers. Vendors are paid with checks written in the Checkbook against their unpaid invoices.
The vendor code tracks purchases and invoices for the things you buy. The vendor account keeps a running account balance, so it’s easy to see at-a-glance just how much you owe someone. When an invoice is added into Accounts Payable, you’ll enter the vendor number first -- this links the invoice to the vendor account on reports, especially the account agings.
Deciding who is a vendor is simple: If someone invoices you for things or services you buy, they’re a vendor. You can’t add a payable invoice unless the vendor exists (although you can add a vendor at the same time as the invoice). Once a vendor is added, it can be used again by entering in the vendor number.
Detailed account information can be easily maintained for each vendor, including task, markup, and notes. This information stays in a central location (your Clients & Profits database) and is generally accessible to everyone. This makes finding vendor information much faster than using someone’s Rolodex cards or filing system. This information can be entered, changed, or deleted, any time.
A vendor with a balance or any activity (including paid invoices) can’t be deleted. Otherwise, its invoices wouldn’t have a vendor account balance to update on aging reports.
How Clients & Profits manages vendor markups
One of the ways in which markups are managed is through the vendor account. Every vendor can have a special markup percentage. This percentage is copied automatically to every invoice you’ll add for the vendor. It’s a useful way to precisely control your markups, for more consistency and accuracy.
Here’s how it works: When a vendor is first added, it gets a markup from Agency Information. This is the standard agency markup. When an invoice is added for this vendor, its markup is copied to the invoice. If a job task has a guaranteed markup (which you would have set up on the client account or task table, per some arrangement), it replaces the vendor’s markup. Of course, you can still change the invoice’s markup without affecting the job or the vendor account.
This ability lets you program basic markups for different vendors. Some vendors, like printers, might always have the standard 17.65% markup (which calculates to a 15% commission on the cost). Other vendors, like typesetters, might have a 50% markup since their invoices are smaller. Or, a large vendor (like a media firm) might have a 12% markup because of the relatively high dollar volume. In all cases, it’s your choice -- and one that you can make or change anytime, very easily.
Vendors, staffers, freelancers, and temps
Staff members aren’t vendors, since they’re paid through payroll. Staff time is accounted for with time sheets, not A/P invoices.
Just what is a freelancer? A freelancer can be both a staff member and a vendor. If you’ll track a freelancer’s time on an hourly basis with Time Cards or Time Sheets, then he or she is added as a staff member. But if the freelancer is also added as a vendor, then he or she should be added twice -- once as a vendor then again as a staff member.
What are temps? A temp acquired from a temporary placement agency is not a vendor; instead, he or she is a staff member. So who is the vendor? The placement agency is the vendor, since they’ll be sending you bills for the temp’s hours worked.
