Vendors & Customers
Manage your company's vendors, customers, and payees (employees). Supports list browsing, detail viewing, creating, editing, and merging.
Vendors & Customers
Manage your company's vendors, customers, and payees (employees). Supports list browsing, detail viewing, creating, editing, and merging.
Quick Start
The system has three types of contacts, each for a different business role:
| Type | Meaning | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | External party that provides goods or services to your company | Office supply vendors, logistics companies, etc. |
| Customer | External party that buys goods or services from your company | Business clients, partners, etc. |
| Payee | Internal employees or individual payees | Employees submitting expense claims, freelancers, etc. |
How they relate: All three types share the same data model but differ by type. Vendors are linked to vendor bills, customers are linked to sales invoices, and payees are linked to expense claims and employee payroll bills. The type is set when created and cannot be changed later.
Quickest path:
- Create a contact: Go to the Vendors or Customers list, tap "New Merchant", fill in the name and type, then save
- Auto-creation: When you upload a bill or sales invoice, AI will automatically match or create the corresponding vendor/customer record
- View details: Tap a contact (vendor/customer) in the list to view detailed information
Detailed Guide
Standard User Operations
Create a Contact
Entry: App > Side menu > Vendors or Customers > "New Merchant" button
Fields to fill in:
| Field | Required | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | Display name. For vendors/customers, the system checks for duplicate names |
| Type | Yes | Vendor / Customer / Payee. Cannot be changed after creation |
| Accounting Group | Yes | A combined selection of business classification and counterparty type. Affects GL account mapping |
| Contact Info | No | Email, phone, address, website, etc. |
| Bank Info | No | Bank name, account name, account number |
| Tax Info | No | Tax registration, tax registration number (vendors/customers only) |
| Match Name | No | Alias list for automatic bank statement matching |
| Tags | No | Labels for filtering |
After creation, all amount fields start at zero. The system will automatically check if the name is similar to other contacts and create a to-do reminder if there is a match.
Edit a Contact
Entry: App > Side menu > Vendors or Customers > Tap a contact > Edit
You can edit the name, contact info, bank info, tax info, match names, tags, and more.
Important notes:
- The contact type cannot be changed
- When changing a vendor/customer name, the system will re-check for duplicate names
- When changing a payee's employee ID, the system will check for uniqueness within the same organization and type
View Contact Details
Entry: App > Side menu > Vendors or Customers > Tap a contact
Tap a contact in the list to view detail information, including all contact fields and linked amount data.
Match Name Management
Entry: Contact detail > Match Name edit
Match names are an alias list used for automatic bank statement matching. For example, the vendor "ABC Corp" might appear as "ABC Corporation" or "A.B.C. Corp." in bank statements. Adding these as match names allows the system to automatically link bank transactions to the correct vendor.
Delete a Contact
Entry: Contact detail > "Delete"
Delete restrictions:
- Payee linked to an organization member: cannot be deleted
- Referenced by bills, invoices, transactions, statements, or other business records: cannot be deleted
Management Operations
Merge Contacts
Entry: App > Side menu > Vendors or Customers > Select multiple contacts > "Merge"
When the same vendor or customer has multiple records in the system (for example, AI created duplicate records), you can merge them into one.
Conditions:
- Select at least 2 contacts, up to 20
- All contacts must be the same type
After merging:
- A new contact is created and all old contacts are removed
- All linked business documents (bills, invoices, bank transactions, etc.) are automatically updated to the new contact
- Match names are merged: all old contacts' match names are combined into the new contact
- Amounts are added up: outstanding balance, total transaction amount, payable totals, etc.
Merging cannot be undone.
List & Search
Entry: App > Side menu > Vendors or Customers
The App supports browsing the list by contact type (Vendors / Customers / Employees).
Search: Searches name, phone, email, and address at the same time.
Amount Tracking
The system automatically tracks amount data for each contact. No manual action is needed:
| Amount Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Outstanding Balance | Receivable/payable balance |
| Total Transaction Amount | Total of linked bills/invoices |
| Total Payable/Receivable | Total payable amount of linked bills/invoices |
Automatic Merchant Matching
When you upload a bill or sales invoice, AI-recognized vendor/customer names are automatically matched against existing contacts:
- AI extracts the vendor/customer name
- The name is standardized (converted to lowercase, spaces and punctuation removed, etc.)
- Compared exactly against match names of contacts of the same type
- Match found: automatically linked. No match: you select the contact manually
Unknown contacts: When AI cannot extract a name, the system creates a record named "Unknown Vendor" or "Unknown Customer". You can rename or merge these later.
Quick Reference
Contact Lifecycle
| Stage | Description |
|---|---|
| Created | Created manually or auto-created by AI. Amounts start at zero |
| In Use | Referenced by bills, invoices, and other documents. Amounts update automatically |
| Merged | 2-20 contacts of the same type merged into one. Old contacts are removed |
| Deleted | Contacts with no business references can be deleted |
Common Scenarios
Daily Management
AI created many duplicate vendors. How do I fix this? Find the duplicate records in the vendor list, select them, and tap "Merge". After merging, all linked bills, bank transactions, etc. are automatically updated. We recommend maintaining match names (aliases) on the new contact to reduce future duplicates.
There are many "Unknown Vendor" records. How do I clean them up? These were auto-created when AI could not extract a vendor name. You can open the corresponding bill or statement and manually select the correct vendor.
Bank transactions are not matching to the correct vendor? Edit the vendor's match names in the vendor detail. Adding match names helps the system link bank transactions to the correct vendor automatically.
Accounting
What is the difference between vendors and customers? Vendors are people you pay (linked to vendor bills). Customers are people who pay you (linked to sales invoices). They use the same data model but have different types and link to different business documents. The type is set at creation and cannot be changed.
The following features are only available on the web version: Data export (Excel), custom tag group management, batch clean up (remove contacts with zero transaction amounts and no business references), contact detail panel (with activity statistics and bank reconciliation tabs), vendor classification inline editing, vendor payment info management (add, edit, and delete multiple bank account records), Control Account override (assigning a specific GL account to an individual vendor/customer), and contact management (maintaining billing contacts).
If you have other questions, please contact our support team.