Creating and Setting up Suppliers
What are Suppliers?
In Lightyear you create supplier profiles known as Suppliers which are not to be confused with Supplier Cards from your accounting software.
When a map is made, Lightyear pulls the Supplier name from the invoice and saves this against the newly made map. Next, the Supplier Card, which is taken from your connected account software needs connected to that Lightyear supplier name so both match and can be made active once the map is used.
Everytime a new supplier document comes into Lightyear, you apply a map or request one, then connect your accounting supplier, default GL codes etc and apply the map and newly active supplier to the invoice. You only need to do this once per supplier document and from here on out, Lightyear will remember and apply these details for you. The new document will then go straight to your approvals workflow, now that you have taught Lightyear how the document should be set up. You will not be able to export any documents unless this is done.
There's two ways to create and activate suppliers:
- Apply the supplier details during the mapping stage (which we recommend)
- Create Suppliers in the Supplier Tab
Creating a Supplier Profile in Lightyear
Creating a Supplier via the supplier tab is completed as follows:
Once you have clicked this icon from your toolbar you will be taken to the Manage Suppliers page.
If you're just starting to use Lightyear, you don't need to create all your suppliers from the outset - the quickest and most efficient way to create your suppliers is when you're applying a map to the supplier bill... the first time that you receive a bill from that supplier into your Lightyear account. Here's how to do that.
If you do not want to use the ABN lookup or do not have an ABN, Tick the 'no ABN' check box.
Creating a New Supplier
The Supplier's details in Lightyear are broken down into a number of sections/tabs.
- Profile
- Mapping
- Products
- ...more tabs will follow in due course.
As mentioned above, you can create a Lightyear Supplier at any time (via the Supplier tab), or as part of the processing of documents in the Processing tab.
Profile Tab
There's quite a lot to break down here, so let's get to it.
- Lightyear Supplier - what you want to call the supplier in Lightyear
- Supplier ABN/VAT/GST No - May not be mandatory in your jurisdiction. For Australian Lightyear customers, we will be able to use this ABN information to do ABN checks on your Australian suppliers.
- Accounting Supplier - Also known as a Supplier Card. This is what your accounting software uses to reference the Supplier. Selecting your supplier card in this field allows Lightyear to export bill data correctly to your accounting software. See below for more information on this.
- Country - For the supplier. This is important as Lightyear uses this information to determine tax calculations.
- Registered Company Name - The names that Lightyear will provide to you if it is able to retrieve the details from the ABR (Australian Business Registry) website. Note that it may sometimes provide you with more than one name to choose from.
- Currency - this is defaulted by Lightyear to that of the currency of the country that you selected for your supplier, but you can change the currency in which they normally bill you here. For instance, Facebook generally bills as an Irish supplier, but in your local currency (not euros)
- Accounts email - the email address for the accounts department of your supplier
- Orders email - this email address will be the default when generating Purchase Orders through Lightyear (currently in Beta)
- Registered for GST/VAT - In Australia, Lightyear checks the ABN of the Supplier with the Australian Business Registry, and lets you know if they are registered for GST at the time you create the Supplier
- Inventory Supplier - This is how your supplier appears in your POS or Inventory system. You will not see this box unless you have told Lightyear that you use a 3-rd party Inventory system.
- Default GL Code - The General Ledger Code from your accounting software that will automatically be associated with the supplier. This is optional, as you can assign one here & then all future bills going to your Approvals for this supplier will be assigned this GL Code. Or if your GL Code is always changing for this supplier, you may choose to leave this blank and then assign it in the Approvals or Review tab, each time.
- Department - You can select one or multiple departments that this supplier will be in.
- Default Tax Code - If you leave this blank, Lightyear will continue to use the default taxable tax-rate that you chose as part of completing your Accounting Supplier set-up. But, if in special circumstances you would prefer for the default taxable tax code for this supplier to be different than your default taxable tax code that you have set for your company, then you can set it here.
- Location - dependent on your Accounting Software (and set-up), this may not be here, or may be called Tracking Category, or Category, or Job etc
- Department - If you are using Departments in Lightyear, you may assign the supplier to one of your Departments here.
- Number of Days Credit - The number of days credit a supplier offers you. If this is set to anything other than 0, this will override any due date that is extracted from a bill, or if no due date has been extracted from a bill, this will create one for you.
- From end of month - Check this box to set a due date for a specific number of days after the end of the month.
More on Accounting Supplier
In order to move a bill through to the Signed Off tab (from where it will be exported to your accountancy software), you must have a Supplier Card associated with the supplier. If your accountancy software is not connected to Lightyear via an API link, you need to ensure that the Supplier Cards in Lightyear match exactly those that exist in your accountancy software (including case-sensitive characters and spaces). Refer to the guide for your Accounting Software for more information.
Accounting Supplier, Inventory Supplier and Department will only show here if they are enabled under Company Settings
Keyword Automation
If you have turned on this feature in your Lightyear Company Settings, you will see the rules you have set here. This feature allows you to automatically code bills to a specific GL Code or Tracking Category etc based on a unique string of character within the bill, such as an address or site ID. Check out this article for more information on that.
Extraction Rules
These are the Map and Smart Extract rules that you have used for this supplier. These rules will build up automatically over time. You cannot add a rule here, but you can delete one, and you can re-order your preference that Lightyear attempts to apply the rules. If Lightyear receives a bill from this email address, it will try these map numbers in order to try to extract the data, in sequence, top to bottom.
If you want to stop a map from being automatically used, this is where you can remove the rule. Just click the Trash can for the specific line and click Confirm.
You can save more than one map & sender as the 'Best Map', as our system will first try the most recently saved one, then if that doesn't work, it will try the others one by one
For information on the Smart Extract tab, click here.
Product/Rules Automation
If you have turned on the Price Checking function in your Lightyear Company Settings, you will see the Products tab.
Further information on how the Price checking feature works, and how to set this all up, can be found here.
Merging Suppliers
Lightyear gives you the option of merging two Suppliers. You might need to do this for instance if you accidentally created two Lightyear Suppliers for the same company, the supplier changed their ABN etc, raising the risk of duplicate payment, over payment and causing Lightyear to be less efficient.
To merge suppliers, open the supplier you DO NOT wish to keep and click the Merge button. In the popup window, select the supplier you want to merge with (this one will remain). Once a second supplier has been selected and confirmed, all bills and statements will be moved to the second supplier. The first supplier removed from Lightyear.
Departments
In this screen you can assign a single or multiple departments to a Supplier. To do so, click on the Department box in the Profile screen under the header Supplier Rules. You will see a list of departments that you have created. (if this section is blank or does not exist you have not switched the departments feature on or have not created any departments yet). More information on Departments can be found here.
Click the Departments that this bills from this Supplier should be visible in:
Click Update to the bottom right to save these supplier settings.
Check out our
to stay up to date
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