What is a vendor management template?
A vendor management template keeps one record for every supplier you buy from, with what they supply, whether they are approved, how much you spend with them a year and when the contract ends. It answers the questions that otherwise mean digging through invoices: who are we paying, how much, and what renews soon.
In PromptLab it installs as a custom object with six sample vendors, from a raw-materials supplier to a software subscription, each with its spend and contract date.
What's inside
| Field | Type | Choices and details |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Text | |
| Category | Select | Software, Logistics, Raw materials, Services, Hardware |
| Status | Status | Evaluating, Approved, Active, Inactive |
| Contact email | ||
| Phone | Phone | |
| Website | URL | |
| Annual spend | Currency | USD |
| Contract end | Date | |
| Account | Link | Links to Account |
1One record per supplier
Vendor, Category, Status, Contact email, Phone, Website, Annual spend, Contract end and Account. Polymer Supply is an Active raw-materials vendor at $420,000 a year; Clearview Packaging is Active too, and its contract ends in about six weeks.
Category separates Software, Logistics, Raw materials, Services and Hardware, and Status runs Evaluating, Approved, Active and Inactive, so a supplier still on trial, like Precision Tools, is never mistaken for an approved one.
Use templateVendors
Object · 9 fields
2Contract dates you can sort by
Contract end is a date field, so sorting by it lists the renewals coming up first. Annual spend is a currency field, which makes the biggest suppliers easy to find and the totals easy to check.
3Make it your supplier list
Rename the categories to the ones your purchasing team uses, add fields such as payment terms or a quality rating, or link each vendor to the contact you order from. Import your current supplier spreadsheet as a CSV or Excel file and delete the samples.