Suppliers are an integral part of any business that purchases goods from wholesale suppliers to stock in their store.
Having a streamlined system to add, edit and delete suppliers where necessary, are features that your point-of-sale solution will need to be able to handle.
Thankfully, Hike POS contains a robust supplier management system, where retailers can effectively manage their entire list of vendors, including adding them to their Purchase Orders.
Before we look at how to add, edit, and delete a Supplier in Hike, let’s take a look at the Suppliers section in Hike itself, to give you an overview of what’s on the screen so as to better familiarize yourself with it.
To begin, select Inventory on the Hike menu and navigate to the Suppliers screen.
This is where you’ll find all your existing Suppliers, and where you’ll be able to add new Suppliers, where necessary.
Use the FIND search bar to search for existing Suppliers, by their names.
Here you will either import your Supplier database or export your existing database on Hike to/from a CSV file.
Select +ADD NEW to trigger a new dialog box to slide out, where you will be able to create a new Supplier.
The Suppliers List View is in reference to the columns occupying this section. Below we’ll go through what each column means:
The name of the Supplier
This will be the text from your Suppliers Notes files – when you create/edit your supplier. Use it to create notes about your supplier.
Determine the active status – currently in circulation - of your Supplier.
Note: If the Supplier is inactive
In this section, we’ll cover how to add a new Supplier in Hike. Creating suppliers allows you to easily keep detailed records of your purchases.
To begin, select Inventory from the Hike menu and navigate to the Suppliers screen.
Click on the +ADD NEW button to start creating your new Supplier in Hike.
From here, the Supplier form will load, asking you to provide various details of the Supplier so that you can activate it in Products and Purchase orders.
Let’s look at the form in more detail.
This is the name of the Supplier. This is the only mandatory field in the form, though if you are integrating with third-party programs, they may also require additional details.
The Company Name will also appear on the Purchase Order.
Note: You can add a Supplier as a contact, such as Accounts Depts. but mark it as inactive, so it will not be an option when sending Purchase Orders. However, you may wish to label this entry as Company Name – Accounts Dept. to maintain clear, and concise records.
The Supplier Code is an optional field that does not appear on Purchase Orders or even other records. If you are integrating with third-party programs, you may wish to add a Supplier code as required by that specific program.
Note: If the code is incorrect, it may prevent Hike from syncing with your program.
Enter the phone number of the company. The phone number will appear on the Purchase Order. This is also an optional field.
This is an optional field to record Supplier's website.
The address is an optional section however if entered, it will appear on your Purchase Order.
If the Physical Address is the same as the Mailing Address, tick the box.
The Note field is for internal reference only.
The note text only appears when editing, and on the Supplier section in the Description field.
Optional fields can be anything up to 50 characters long.
This is an optional field.
This is an optional field; however, Hike recommends recording an email address as a minimum – in addition to the Company’s name.
This is an optional field to set the default tax on the Purchase Orders.
You can still change the tax on the Purchase Order, this just pre-fills your preferred choice. Select your tax rate, from the drop-down list.
If there is no appropriate tax rate, simply save your progress and go to Store Setup > Tax Rules (accessed via the Hike Menu) to create your new tax rate.
Invoices due date
You can set invoice due date terms in supplier profiles. The due date is then automatically applied when a supplier’s purchase order is synced to Xero accounting software.
Specify ‘invoice due date’ when creating or updating a supplier profile. For existing supplier profiles ‘30 days after the invoice date is applied as a default payment term for all existing profiles. Go to Suppliers and tap on a supplier name to edit these terms.
Once you have completed adding in the details of the Supplier, click the SAVE button to finish.
Note: If the SAVE button is greyed out, it means that you have not added the Company Name – the only mandatory field.
To edit a supplier Hike, all you need to head to the Suppliers List View (Inventory > Suppliers, accessed via the Hike menu), and select the Supplier you want to Edit.
This will open the dialog box that you used to create the Supplier, with all the necessary details. Once you’ve completed your changes, click on SAVE to finalize your changes.
In instances where your Supplier has a short shelf-life – i.e., they are seasonal wholesales and not year-long – it may be necessary to make them inactive from your Suppliers rotation, for when the time comes.
The final column of the Suppliers List View (Inventory > Suppliers) is the Active column. Toggling this button will determine if the Supplier is currently active (with your store) or not.
Note: If the Supplier is inactive
Hike also makes it easy for you to permanently delete your Supplier, should the need arise – like in instances where you are no longer purchasing from the said supplier.
Select the Supplier that you want to delete from the Supplier List View (Inventory > Suppliers).
Once you’ve opened the Supplier’s dialog box, at the bottom of the page there is a DELETE SUPPLIER button. Click on it to delete the Supplier.
A pop-up box will appear asking you if you want to permanently delete the Supplier. Select CONTINUE.
Note: If the Supplier is deleted