The Vendor Centre is the list of everyone you buy from: suppliers of stock, landlords, utilities, contractors, the accountant. Each row shows how to reach the vendor and how much you currently owe them. Double-click a vendor to open their ledger, where every bill, payment and credit on their account is listed with the balance after each one. Use the Vendor Centre to add vendors, correct their details, find out what you owe and why, and jump to the vendor reports.
Opening the Vendor Centre
- Vendors ▸ Vendor Centre.
- On the Home Page, the Vendor Centre button at the top of the Vendors panel.
- Ctrl+Shift+J (Supplier ledger & balance) opens a vendor look-up, so you can go straight to one vendor's ledger. It is also in Go To / Look Up (Ctrl+K).
The window is titled Vendor Centre (Vendor Center in a US company). The list inside it is headed Suppliers, with a count of how many are on file.
The vendor list
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Name | The name the vendor's documents carry: the company name for a company, the person's name for a person (you choose which on the vendor record). The other name, if there is one, is shown underneath in small type: the contact person at a company, or the company a person works for. |
| Phone | The vendor's mobile or main number, or — when none is recorded. |
| The vendor's email address. | |
| City | City and province (or state) from the billing address. |
| Tax no. | The vendor's tax number from their record (the number a contractor slip uses). |
| Balance | What you owe the vendor now: their unpaid bills, less anything already paid. Shown in red when you owe money. If a balance could not be loaded, the cell shows check; click it to load that one vendor's figure. |
Two small icons at the end of each row:
- Duplicate (copy icon) starts a new vendor record copied from this one. The original is not changed. See Add or edit a vendor.
- Edit details (pencil icon) opens the vendor's record for editing.
The footer reminds you that Balance = unpaid supplier bills.
Searching, sorting and filtering
- The Search name, company, phone or email… box at the top searches both the company name and the person's name, the first and last names, the phone number and the email. A vendor entered with the company name in the person's field is still found.
- Once the list has eight or more vendors, the list itself also has a Search this list… box, a Filters button (filters and saved views on a column, such as Balance greater than 0), and a Columns button to hide columns you do not use.
- Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse. Sort by Balance to see who you owe most.
- The list remembers its filter while you drill into a vendor and come back.
Buttons above the list
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Refresh | Reads every vendor from the cloud again — adding anyone missing from this computer and taking off anyone deleted in the cloud — then re-reads every balance. Reads Refreshing… while it works. |
| Merge… | Combines two vendor records for the same vendor into one. Shown only to roles allowed to merge. See Merging two vendors. |
| Reports | A menu of the vendor reports: Vendor Balance Summary, Vendor Balance Detail, A/P Aging Summary, A/P Aging Detail, Unpaid Bills Detail and Transaction List by Vendor. Each opens the report for all vendors. See Vendors & Payables reports. |
| New supplier | Opens the form to add a vendor. See Add or edit a vendor. |
A vendor's ledger
Double-click a vendor (or select the row and press Enter) to open their ledger in a window of its own. The window title is the vendor's name, with Supplier ledger underneath. Opening the same vendor again brings their existing window to the front. Several vendors' ledgers can be open side by side; move, resize, minimise and close them like any other window.
The balance band
Across the top of the ledger:
| Figure | What it means |
|---|---|
| Opening · date | What you owed the vendor at the start of the period shown. |
| Purchases | Bills and purchases dated in the period. |
| Paid out | Payments you made to the vendor in the period. |
| Debit notes | Returns and vendor credits in the period. |
| You owe / Supplier owes you / Settled | The balance at the end of the period. You owe (red) is money you still owe; Supplier owes you (green) means they are holding a credit of yours; Settled means nothing is owed either way. |
| Terms | The vendor's standing payment terms, when their record has any. |
If the figures the ledger adds up do not agree with the balance SeroBooks holds for the vendor, an amber Balance does not reconcile — check with support badge appears. Do not rely on that balance until it is resolved.
The lines
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Date | The document or payment date. |
| Type | Purchase (a bill), Expense, Debit note (a return or vendor credit), Payment made, General Journal (a journal line naming this vendor), Opening balance, or Void (a voided payment kept at zero). |
| Reference | The bill number, cheque number or reference. |
| Details | The payment method (with the cheque or authorization number), or any note. |
| Debit | Amounts that reduce what you owe (payments, credits). |
| Credit | Amounts that increase what you owe (bills). |
| Balance | What you owed after that line. |
The ledger opens on the last twelve months. Use the period bar at the top to choose another period. Double-click a line to open the bill, payment or other document behind it.
Ledger buttons
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Summary F5 | Folds the ledger into one line per month (Month, Entries, Debit, Credit, Closing balance), with a chart. Press F5 or the button again (Detail) to go back to the lines. Double-click a month to see its lines. Esc also goes back from the summary. |
| Options | Ledger options: Show bill references (one line per cheque with each bill it paid beneath it), Show item details (the items on every bill beneath it), Show the opening balance (a line for the balance brought forward), Daily balance (the balance once a day instead of after every line) and Oldest first. Choose Apply. The options are remembered on this computer for every ledger you open. |
| Edit | Opens the vendor's record. |
| Duplicate | A new vendor copied from this one. |
| Delete | Deletes the vendor. SeroBooks deletes a name only when no bill, payment, journal entry or other entry uses it; otherwise Cannot delete tells you what is using it. |
| Custom Fields | Opens the vendor's custom field values. Only fields defined for vendors in Custom Fields are shown. |
| Statement | Builds a statement of the vendor's account as a PDF. |
| Refresh | Re-reads the ledger. |
Esc closes the ledger window (or, from the monthly summary, returns to the lines first).
Merging two vendors
When the same vendor has been entered twice, bills and payments end up split across two ledgers. Merge… fixes that:
- Choose Merge… above the list.
- Pick the two records. You are asked which one to KEEP and which to RETIRE.
- SeroBooks counts what will move from the retired record and checks, before anything happens, that the merge is allowed. The Merge button stays unavailable until that check has come back.
- Confirm Merge and keep "name"?. Every document on the retired record moves to the one you keep.
A merge cannot be undone from the app, so check which name you keep: it is the name on every future document.
Permissions
- Seeing the Vendor Centre needs access to the vendors list in the user's role.
- New supplier and Duplicate need Add Supplier; Edit needs Edit Supplier; Merge… needs Merge Suppliers; Delete needs the delete right on vendors.
If a role lacks a right, SeroBooks asks for someone who has it. See Roles and permissions explained.
Tips
- Keep one vendor per real business. Search before you add, and merge duplicates as soon as you find them.
- The ledger's Details column shows the cheque number or card authorization of each payment, which makes it quick to match against the vendor's own statement.
- To pay a vendor, use Pay Bills, or open one of their bills and choose Pay.
Common problems
A vendor I know I entered is not in the list. Search by the phone number or part of the company name. If the name was typed into the contact person field, it is still found by the search box. If the vendor is on other computers but not this one, click Refresh: it downloads the whole vendor list again. If the vendor was deleted, add them again.
The Balance column shows "check". The balances for the whole list could not be loaded at once. Click check on the row, or choose Refresh.
A vendor's balance looks wrong. Open the ledger and read it line by line for the period in question. A bill entered twice, a payment entered against the wrong vendor, or a vendor entered twice (see Merging two vendors) are the usual causes. A bill saved as Pending is not yet in Accounts Payable; see Enter Bills.
"Cannot delete" when deleting a vendor. The vendor has bills, payments or other entries. You cannot delete a name that is in use; leave it, or merge it into the vendor you want to keep.