Suppliers

Suppliers

Your suppliers are the companies you buy from, kept as one shared list behind every supplier part and every purchase order — so a name is recorded once, correctly, and used everywhere.

Where to find it: Suppliers in the navigation menu.

Why suppliers are their own list

A supplier used to be typed out afresh on each part and each order, which meant RS Components, rs components and RS-Components were three unrelated pieces of text. Nothing could rename them together, and buying lists split into three groups for one company.

Now each supplier is a single record. Every part and order points at it, so:

• Renaming is instant and total — fix a spelling here and it changes on every part and order.
• Reorder grouping is reliable — one company is one group, never split by spelling.
• Spend reporting adds up — purchases attributed to one company stay together.

ℹ️ Note A supplier is its own record, not a contact. Contacts are the people you lend to and borrow from; suppliers are who you buy from.

The list

Each supplier shows its name, default currency, website and note, along with how much is filed under it: how many supplier parts reference it, and how many purchase orders. Those two numbers are what tell you the cost of deleting it — and whether merging it would be tidier.

Select a supplier to edit it.

💡 Tip Turn on Paginate lists in settings if you'd rather page through a long list than scroll it. See Language & region and the settings pages for the display options.

Adding and editing a supplier

Add supplier opens a short form:

Field	What it's for
Name	How the supplier is known. Matching ignores capitals, spaces and punctuation.
Website	The supplier's home page or storefront. A supplier part keeps its own link to the specific product page.
Default currency	Used when a part or order under this supplier doesn't state a currency of its own — an ISO code such as GBP, EUR or USD.
Note	Anything worth remembering: account number, delivery quirks, who to ask for.

You don't have to come here first. Naming a supplier on a supplier part or a purchase order adds it to this list automatically, folding it onto an existing supplier when the name matches one.

⚠️ Heads-up Renaming a supplier to a name another supplier already uses isn't allowed — the two would then be the same supplier under one identity. Gubbins says so and offers to merge them instead, which is almost always what was meant.

Merging two suppliers

Merge suppliers is the repair path for duplicates that already exist, and the way to retire a supplier while its order history keeps naming a supplier.

Pick the supplier to merge away and the one to merge into. Before anything happens, Gubbins spells out exactly what will move — for example "12 supplier parts and 3 purchase orders will move to RS Components; RS-Components will be deleted." — and asks you to confirm.

Merging then, in one step:

1. Re-points every supplier part at the supplier you're keeping.
2. Re-points every purchase order at it too, so spend history is preserved in full.
3. Deletes the supplier you merged away.

The kept supplier's own details — name, website, currency and note — are the ones that survive.

⚠️ Heads-up Merging can't be undone, and the two suppliers can't be separated again afterwards. Read the summary before confirming.

Deleting a supplier

Any supplier can be deleted. Before it happens, the confirmation spells out both consequences:

• Supplier parts filed under it are deleted with it — the confirmation says how many.
• Purchase orders are kept — deleting a supplier never destroys a record of what you spent. Those orders simply stop naming a supplier, and show as Unknown supplier from then on.

If the supplier was a duplicate, merge it instead: the orders move to the supplier you keep and carry on naming one, rather than being left unattributed. See Merging two suppliers above.

💡 Tip If a supplier has simply gone out of business, neither is necessarily right — a supplier you no longer buy from but did buy from is worth keeping, so past orders still name who they came from.

Turning the screen off

Suppliers is a module like any other page: hide it from Modules if you don't need it. Supplier names still work on parts and orders — you just won't have the screen for tidying the list. See Modular UI.

Related pages

• Supplier parts & price history — who sells an item, at what code and price.
• Purchase orders — ordering from a supplier.
• Reorder & shopping list — what to buy, grouped by supplier.
• Valuation & spend — what you've spent, by supplier.
• Contacts — the separate list of people you lend to and borrow from.