Search UW System

UW System Home > Financial Administration > Shared Financial System

Previous Topic		Back to Contents		SFS Home		Continue with Manual
UW Shared Financial System - Purchasing Training

Maintaining Vendor Information
Searching for an Existing Vendor | Entering a New Vendor | 1099 Information | Vendor Contact

The vendor file is shared by all business units and contains the following types of information about vendors:

• Type of vendor, such as supplier or employee
• Address information (ordering, invoicing and remitting addresses)
• Defaults that tell the system how to handle shipping and matching to invoices
• Payment terms that establish defaults for processing payments

Unlike most of the shared tables, the vendor file will be maintained by staff at each campus. Maintaining the integrity of the file is extremely important. Please make every effort to be sure the vendor is not already in the file before creating a new one.

If you use a vendor that already exists, you may need to add a location to suit your own Business Unit's needs for purchase order and remittance addresses. Instructions for entering a new location can be found later in this section under "Entering a New Vendor - Location Panel". DO NOT change any existing information and DO NOT change the default locations. The default locations should remain as set by the Business Unit that originally added the vendor to the table.

Searching for an existing vendor

Activity: Look for Waldenbooks in the vendor file.
Navigation: Go, Administer Procurement, Maintain Vendors Select Use, Vendor Information, Identifying Information, Update Display

The following window will be returned.

• Change the SetID to SHARE
• Enter the first several letters in the Short Vendor Name Field and then double click in that field or press Shift + F4

For example, to see if WALDENBOOKS has already been established as a valid vendor, fill in the window as follows and press Shift +F4. A drop down list of vendors that begin with WAL will be returned.

• Scroll down to WALDENBOOK and highlight it; double click to populate the short vendor name window and then click OK or press enter.
• Select Waldenbooks from the next window by double clicking the name or click the select button.

You should now be viewing the following panel. Take some time to look over the data on the various panels. The fields will be explained in detail when you add a vendor in a later exercise.

% can be used as a wild card in a search. So, another way to search for Waldenbooks is to enter %BOOK in the short name field and double click or press F4. You would then get a list of all vendors that ended with BOOK.

Searching by Tax ID Number
If a vendor is identified as 1099 reportable, a search can be done by Tax ID number (if it is known). The navigation for this panel is Go, Administer Procurement, Maintain Vendors. Then select Use, 1099 Vendor Information, Update/Display. Select a SetID of SHARE and enter the Tax ID number in the TIN field.

Entering a New Vendor

When entering a new vendor in SFS, you should follow the standards that were developed by the Department of Administration (DOA) for the State of Wisconsin Accounting System (WiSMART). These standards are based on the United Postal Addressing Standards and the IRS controls for matching FEIN and Social Security numbers with the business name or individual name. They can be found in Appendix E.

Once it is determined that the vendor does not exist, you can enter a new vendor by doing the following:

Activity: Enter a new vendor
Navigation: Go, Administer Procurement, Maintain Vendors. Then select Use, Vendor Information, Identifying Information, Add.

• Enter a SetID of SHARE
• Click on OK

Identifying Information Panel

• Name 1: Enter a vendor name in all caps using the Vendor File Standards found in Appendix E. There are 40 characters available for this information. An example of the proper format is:

BANDO & ASSOCIATES CONSULTING

• Name 2: You can leave this blank or enter whatever you'd like. However, if you enter something, be sure that you follow the Vendor File Standards found in Appendix E.
• Short Name: This is the field that others will be using to verify the existence of vendors prior to adding a new one. It should be the first 10 alphanumeric characters that were entered in the Name 1 field. Spaces and special characters should be left out. For example:

BANDOASSOC

• Classification: Select Supplier
• 1099 box: Leave this unchecked for now - it will be covered in the next exercise.
• Status: This will default based on your operator preferences for vendor maintenance.
• Persistence: Using Regular is recommended. Your choices are:

• One-time means one Purchase Order will be written, one payment will be made and then the vendor will be marked as inactive
• Regular means you want the vendor to be purged from the database at some future time
• Permanent means you will not be able to purge the vendor from the database

• Vendor Relationships: Leave blank. This information is optional to be filled in if it is available.
• Select the next panel by clicking on the tab header or by selecting the next panel button. A third option is to press F2.
  

Location Panel

• The location on this panel will default to 001.
• The effective date should default to the current date. Use this as the effective date of the location you are adding.
• You must enter at least one address for each new vendor that you add. If one address does not serve as an ordering, invoicing and remitting address, you must enter additional addresses. If more than three addresses are entered, you will not be able to enter a check mark to identify more than one default ordering, invoicing or remitting address. Instead you will need to rely on what is entered into the Descr field.
• You may add a new address by placing your cursor in the Descr field and pressing F7 or clicking on the insert row icon.
• The Description (Descr) field separates one address and one campus from another for the same vendor. In the Descr field, it is very important to enter identifying information that will be useful when creating purchase orders and vouchering invoices. In the first 3 positions of the Descr field, enter the 3-character campus designation (in all capital letters), followed by a space in the 4^th position, followed by an indication of the use of this location. For example, if UWADM is adding this vendor and this location will be used for ordering, invoicing and remitting, the Descr field should look like this:

  ADM ALL

If this vendor has one address for receiving orders and another for receiving payments, then 2 locations should be established, with the Descr field looking like this:

ADM ORD
ADM REM

If there are multiple locations for ordering/remitting for the same vendor and for the same institution, then descriptive wording may be added beyond the above. For example:

ADM ORD WESTOWNE
ADM REM WESTOWNE
ADM ORD EASTOWNE
ADM REM EASTOWNE

• Enter a full address using the standards found in Appendix E Enter phone numbers whenever they are known.

Note that if you place your cursor in the Effective Date field or any field lower on the panel, you would create another row for the same address. An example of when this might be used is if UW Madison Purchasing moved to a new location, you would enter a new address and use an effective date that reflects when the move took place.

ALL REMAINING PANELS
The defaults on these panels are selected from the payment options and tables that were discussed earlier in this manual. The ability exists at the vendor level to override one or more defaults if desired. Usually, no changes should be made on these panels, including effective date. An exception is Payment Options tab - there is a "Hold Payments" box that you can check if you want to prevent payments from being made to a vendor. For example, this might be used if you are waiting for a W9 form.

Save your work

• Return now to the Identifying Information panel and save your work

1099 Information
When you enter a new vendor, you are responsible to request a W9 form. Any time you use an existing vendor, you can assume that a W9 is already on file at the UW institution that added the record. If, based on information the vendor supplies on the W-9, any payments might be subject to 1099 reporting, that information must be entered into SFS using the following steps. If you identify a vendor as 1099 reportable, any purchase orders written to the vendor are automatically identified as 1099 reportable. This can be overridden at the time the purchase order is created. If it is not overridden, then vouchers written against the purchase order will also automatically be identified as 1099 vouchers. This is discussed further in the section on Creating a Purchase Order, under the PO Lines Detail Panel.

Activity: Become familiar with the 1099 Vendor Information panel.
Navigation: Navigate to the vendor you just entered by clicking on the blue check mark right next to the green plus sign at the top of the panel.

• On the Identifying Information panel of the vendor record, check the 1099 box. This should highlight the magnifying glass. Click on the magnifying glass to go to the 1099 Vendor Information panel.
• Information for this panel should be taken from the W9 form.
• Enter an appropriate effective date.
• Enter a Tax Identification Number - just make one up for purposes of this exercise.
• Select either Federal ID or SSN, as appropriate.
• Select a Vouchering Default code from the drop down list.
• Enter a Control ID, Name and Address. This field is required for electronic filing of 1099 reports. It usually consists of the first four characters of the Name 1 field. If you are entering a name for the person who is the sole proprietor of the vendor (for example, a consultant) IRS rules specify that you must use the actual surname of the vendor, that is the Reporting Name, not the Doing Business As (DBA) name. The system will automatically format the address in uppercase letters according to the latest IRS regulations.

• You will receive the following message when you save your work. This is a message that reminds you that the set up you just completed does not automatically mean that a voucher/payment will be marked as 1099 reportable.
• Click on OK

Vendor Contact Persons
The following screen can be used to track contact persons for a given vendor. Multiple lines can be inserted to hold multiple contacts. The contacts are associated with a specific location from the vendor location panel.

Vendor Conversation Panel
This panel can be used to record comments about a specific vendor. They can be general with a topic or they can be related to a specific vendor contact. It can be used to track conversations very specifically or used as a general comment screen.

Previous Topic

Back to Contents

SFS Home

Continue with Manual