Vendor Management Overview

Vendors are the suppliers you buy from and pay: equipment sellers, repair shops, spare-parts dealers, and service providers. Rentablez gives you two connected places to work with them — one for who your vendors are, and one for what you buy and owe them.

Two Places, Two Jobs

Where What it’s for Permission
Customers → Vendors (the vendor list) Add and maintain vendor contact records — name, phone, email, address, GST No. vendors.read to view, vendors.write to add or edit
Purchases (the menu) The buying and money side — purchase requests, purchase orders, bills, and accounts payable procurement.* for requests, vendors.read / vendors.write for the rest

The vendor list is your address book. The Purchases menu is your buying and payables workspace. You save a vendor once, then pick that vendor whenever you raise a purchase order, record a bill or log an expense — or add a new one on the spot with + New Vendor in the vendor dropdown.

If you can’t see one of these areas, it’s a permissions or plan matter. The vendor list is available on every plan; the Purchases menu needs the Accounting & Financials module. Ask an admin to check your role or plan.

The Vendor List

Under Customers → Vendors you keep a searchable, sortable list of every supplier. Each vendor record holds:

  • Name — the supplier’s legal or display name.
  • Contact — phone, mobile, and email.
  • Address — street, district, city, state, country, and postal code.
  • GST No. — the tax identifier, validated for format.

Rather than deleting a supplier you no longer use, you mark it Inactive. That keeps every past bill and purchase order intact while removing the vendor from selection lists for new records. Full steps are in How to Manage Vendors?.

The Purchases Menu

Open Purchases from the top menu. It has four pages:

  • Purchase Requests — what the business needs, before a vendor is chosen. Optionally collect and compare vendor quotes.
  • Purchase Orders — what you’ve committed to buy from one vendor. Send it, receive the goods, and turn it into a bill.
  • Bills — the invoices your vendors send you. Record them, attach the original document, and log payments.
  • Accounts Payable — what you owe: bills to pay, an aging breakdown, and the payments you’ve made, plus a statement for each vendor.

Purchase reports — Spend Summary, Purchase Register and Asset Purchase Costs — are under Reports → Purchases.

Each part has its own guide: How to Manage Purchases?, Recording Vendor Invoices & Payments, and Payables Aging & Vendor Statements.

A Typical Flow

  1. Add the vendor once in Customers → Vendors (or with + New Vendor while you work).
  2. Raise a purchase request for what you need, and optionally compare vendor quotes.
  3. Create a purchase order from the request, then send it — email or download it as a PDF.
  4. Receive the goods on the PO when they arrive.
  5. Create the bill from the PO — received assets are added to your inventory here.
  6. Record payments as you settle up — the bill flips to Partial or Paid automatically.
  7. Check Accounts Payable to see what’s due and open a vendor’s statement.

A vendor needs an email on file for the Email action on a purchase order to appear. Add one from Customers → Vendors if it’s missing.