Create a New Supplier

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 three ways to create and activate suppliers:  
  1. Apply the supplier details during the mapping stage (which we recommend)
  2. Create Suppliers in the Supplier Tab
  3. Bulk Upload of Suppliers through a CSV - full information can be found here.

Creating a Supplier Profile in Lightyear

Creating a Supplier via the supplier tab is completed as follows:


Once you have clicked this link from the nav you will be taken to the Manage Suppliers page.



Here you will see two tabs: Active and Inactive. They do what the names suggest, your current Active suppliers will be in the Active tab, and any Inactive/Deleted Suppliers will be in the Inactive tab where they can be reinstated to Active again.

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.
  1. Profile
  2. Mapping
  3. Products/Rules Automation
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, and this field is limited to 100 characters. Anything over 100 will truncate.
  • 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)
  • 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
  • PO Supplier - If you are using Purchase Orders, selecting Yes will allow users to select this Supplier. Selecting No will hide this Supplier from view when creating Suppliers
  • 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.
  • Terms - The number of days credit a supplier offers you. 
    • Do Not Populate - This will leave the Due Date field empty
    • From Bill Date - Allows users to select a number of days. E.g. 10 days from Bill Date will populate the Due Date as 10 days after the extracted Bill Date
    • From End of Month - Allows users to select a number of days E.g. 10 days from End of Month will populate the Due Date as 10 days after the end of the current month
    • Due on Receipt - This populates the Due Date as the same date as Bill Date
    • Use Extracted Due Date - Due Date will be the date extracted per the map
    • Last Day of Month - Due Date will populate as the final day of the month, e.g. December 31st, June 30th, February 28th etc.
    • Last Working Day of Month - Due Date will populate as the final weekday of the month, e.g. in December 2023 as December 29th (Friday), August 2024 as August 30th (Friday)
  • From end of month - Check this box to set a due date for a specific number of days after the end of the month.
  • Group Line Item Data - Do you want this supplier's data exported to your Accountancy Software with line item data or grouped by GL Code/Tax Rate/Category?
  • Accounts email - the email address for the accounts department of your supplier. Up to 10 emails can be entered in this field, once you have entered one, click the enter key on your keyboard to enter another one.
  • Orders email - this email address will be the default when generating Purchase Orders through Lightyear. Up to 10 emails can be entered in this field, once you have entered one, click the enter key on your keyboard to enter another one.

Bank Details

Further down the page you will see a section dedicated to the Bank Details of the supplier. Details can be added by clicking  Add Details or by clicking the green pencil icon beside any field. The information that can be stored are as follows:
  1. BSB/Sort Code/Routing Number
  2. Account Number
  3. Account Name
  4. Default Payment Reference
  5. SWIFT/BIC Code
  6. IBAN Number
  7. BPAY Biller Code (AU only)
Audit History will show the history of changes made to this section, including who edited the details and when the changes were made.

This section is part of a larger feature,  Bank Details Checker, which can be found here.
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 Rules 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.

Mapping Tab

These are the mappings 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.


Products/Rules Automation Tab

If you have turned on the Price Checking function in your Lightyear Company Settings, within the Product/Rules Automation tab, you will see the additional columns for +/- and Status, which allows you to set a variance tolerance for uploaded Unit Prices. Enabling Inventory will give you the Case Qty, POS Product Code and Product Unit Type columns. 


The Products tab was previously known as the Product List, which was a separate menu on the LHS of your Lightyear screen.
Further information on how the Price checking feature works, and how to set this all up, can be found here.

Product Rules will apply based on the Product Code that has been mapped. After applying a map, these will be saved in the Products/Rules Automation tab, along with the GL Code and Category that has been applied. The next time an invoice is received with the same product codes, the GL Code and Category will automatically be applied. This is most useful when using a Line Item map.

Rules by Description

Description rules can be created by clicking into the Description sub-tab, and clicking + Rule at the bottom.



When creating a rule, each description can be matched as 'Exact', 'Contains' or 'Does Not Contain'. To change this, in each Rule Type Column, select one of these options from the dropdown menu, These rules will ignore capitalisation and spaces.




Exact: Needs to match the entire description that has been mapped or manually entered.
Contains: Matches a word or phrase within the description.
Does Not Contain: Matches to any description that doesn't contain the word or phrase entered.

The Matching Text field is where to enter the description rule, followed by the GL Code and Categories in the appropriate fields.

These description rules can be copied from one supplier to another. Select the rule(s) to be copied and click 'Copy Rules.'


In the modal, select the supplier(s) that the rules are to be copied to, then click Save.

If the Supplier the rules are being copied to already has a rule with the same description, the GL Code and Category will be updated based on the Supplier the rule if being copied from e.g. if Supplier A has a rule for Vodka set to GL Code 'Alcohol Purchases', and Supplier B has a rule for Vodka set to GL Code 'Food'. When copying from Supplier A to Supplier B, Supplier B will be updated to GL Code 'Alcohol Purchases'.

To delete a description rule, click the icon at the end of the line. This will delete each rule individually. Or click the 'Delete All' button at the top of the page to delete all description rules for the Supplier. After clicking 'Delete All', click Save.




A supplier can have both Product Codes and Description rules set up, but a hierarchy exists that will determine which rules will be applied first.
1. Keyword Rules
2. Product Code Rules.
3. Description Rules.
4. Supplier Defaults
If Keyword Rules exist for a Supplier, these will always be applied first over Product Code Rules. Product Code Rules will always be applied first over Description Rules, and so on.

Using the PO Data to populate the Bill Data

If you use Purchase Orders and 3-way matching, you might want the PO Data and the Bill Data to match exactly.

While in the Bill PO Match modal, users can copy the PO Data (GL Code, Category 1, Category 2 and Misc. Ref) and populate this on the Bill Data.

For full information on how to do this, click 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.



Please watch this short help video below to see the process for merging duplicate suppliers.

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.

Editing Suppliers within Approvals

Supplier details can be edited from within the Approvals Workflow. This includes the Supplier Name, Company Number (ABN, GST No, VAT No, etc.), and any defaults that are set on the supplier (GL Code, Tax Rate, Category, etc).

If you need to edit the Supplier in any way, click the green pencil icon next to the Supplier field within Panel 2



This modal is similar to the Create Supplier modal you may be familiar with from the Processing Tab. 

In the same way as you would edit a Supplier from within the Suppliers Tab, scroll down to the field you want to edit and make the necessary changes. Don’t forget to click Update!

If you have made any changes to the Default GL Codes, Tax Rates, etc, you will need to reapply the map on the invoice to see this change take effect.

To do this, click on More > Re-apply Map


Reinstating a Supplier

If you delete a Supplier at any stage, it can be found in the Inactive tab.



You won't be able to click in to view any additional details or edit the supplier. First you'll need to reinstate it back to Active.

To reinstate, click the blue reinstate icon  on the far right. After confirmation, this Supplier will appear in your Active tab, and you can make any required edits and continue to use the Supplier as normal.




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





      

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