Suppliers
A supplier is a company you buy from. The record holds how to reach them, how long you have to pay, and what you owe them right now.
Find it under Money → Purchasing → Suppliers.
Where to Find It
Click an address to open that screen on your own clinic. The first click asks which clinic you are, then remembers it. Addresses holding a {id} need a specific record, so they are shown but not linked.
| Screen | Address |
|---|---|
| Suppliers | /inventory/suppliers |
| New supplier | /inventory/suppliers/create |
| Supplier details | /inventory/suppliers/{id} |
Adding One
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Supplier * | The company's name |
| Supplier (ar) | Its Arabic name, if you keep both |
| Code | Filled in for you with the next code in the sequence |
| Tax number | Stored exactly as you type it. It is an identifier, so nothing reformats it |
| Contact person, Phone, Other phone, Email, Address | How you reach them. Two numbers, because one company usually has two |
| Payment terms (days) | How long you have to pay. Used later to tell you what is overdue |
| Opening balance | What you already owed them the day you started keeping this record. See below |
* required
"This looks like one you already have"
If the phone number or the tax number matches a supplier you already have, the form comes back and shows you which — with a link, so you can go and look.
TIP
It is a warning, not a refusal. Two branches of one company are two suppliers, and a clinic that buys from both must be able to say so. Press Save anyway and you get a second, separate record. Nothing is ever merged.
The name alone never triggers it. Half the companies in Egypt are called something like «الشركة المتحدة», and warning on a name would teach everyone to click straight through the warning.
The Opening Balance
This is the one number on the form you cannot change later.
It is what you owed the supplier on the day you started keeping this record — the line the statement opens with, and the figure the books are told about. Rewriting it later would rewrite history that your accounts already depend on.
WARNING
Get it right the first time. If it is wrong and the supplier has no documents yet, delete the supplier and enter it again. Once there are documents, it is corrected with an adjusting document rather than by editing.
It also reaches your books: an entry against Owner Capital and Suppliers Payable, dated the day the balance was owed from — because money you owed before you started keeping these books is part of what the owner put into the business, not an expense of this month.
What You Owe
The list shows every supplier's balance, and you can sort or filter by it:
| Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|
| A figure under Balance owed | You owe them this |
| In credit | They are holding your money — a prepayment, or a return they have not yet settled |
| Settled | Nothing either way |
TIP
A credit is always shown as a credit, never as a negative debt. You will not see "-500" anywhere in this system.
Deactivating, and Deleting
Deactivating is the answer almost every time. The supplier disappears from the pickers when you are writing something new, and stays exactly as it is on every document that already names it. Old purchase orders keep reading correctly; you can reactivate at any time.
Deleting works only while nothing references the supplier at all. If anything does — an item that names them as its usual source, a purchase order, a receipt — the system refuses and tells you what is holding it, so you know where to look.
Loading a Spreadsheet
The import screen takes suppliers: name, Arabic name, contact person, both phones, email, tax number, payment terms and opening balance.
A row that looks like a supplier you already have — or that repeats an earlier row in the same file — is reported with its line number and skipped. It is never merged into the existing record, because merging two companies' balances cannot be undone. Add those few by hand afterwards.
WARNING
An opening balance loaded by spreadsheet does not write a journal entry, on purpose: forty entries nobody reviewed is worse than one your accountant enters deliberately. Ask them to post a single opening journal for the batch.
Who Can See Them
| Permission | Lets somebody |
|---|---|
| See suppliers and what is owed | Open the list and any supplier |
| Add and edit suppliers | Create, edit, deactivate, delete, import |
Both also require See what things cost — a supplier's balance is cost information, so there is no useful reader who may see one and not the other. The system checks both, even for a role somebody assembled by hand.