A Supplier is a vendor that you do business with to source the products that you sell. ChannelAdvisor offers an optional settings tool that can be used to associate inventory to a supplier and track your return on investment per vendor.

Once you have created a Supplier record, you can identify the inventory supplier source for each product that is added into ChannelAdvisor.

Prerequisites

• Learn about using ChannelAdvisor as your inventory system

Overview

If you wish to use suppliers to track vendor information, you must first create the supplier in the system, and then apply that supplier to inventory.

How to Create a Supplier

Complete the following steps related to this task:

1. Select Inventory > Settings > Suppliers
2. Click the 'Create a New Supplier' action link
3. Enter the supplier information such as name, address and email address.  Be sure to enter in a supplier code for use with the bulk inventory upload spreadsheet.
4. Click 'Save and Exit'

How to Add a Supplier to an Inventory Item via the User Interface

Once you have created a Supplier record in the system, the Supplier code can be assigned to your inventory. You can use the ChannelAdvisor Upload Spreadsheet process to identify the Supplier, or edit an inventory item through the ChannelAdvisor Inventory view.

1. Select Inventory > Product > All Products
2. Choose an inventory item and click the SKU link to edit
3. In the section labeled 'Inventory Information' locate the Supplier field.
4. Choose a Supplier from the dropdown list
5. Click 'Save and Exit'

How to Add a Supplier to an Inventory Item via the Bulk Upload Spreadsheet

For full details on using the bulk upload spreadsheet, see Using the ChannelAdvisor Bulk Upload Spreadsheet.

1. Locate the Supplier Code field in the bulk upload spreadsheet.
2. Populate it with the Supplier Code that you defined in the Supplier setup.

Tracking Suppliers

Supplier codes are included in the Checkout and Shipping reports available for download from ChannelAdvisor.