Contractors

One file for all matters

A contractor is a built-in record describing a company or a person you work with. You do not create a separate "client" for sales and a separate "supplier" for purchases: one contractor handles both roles, and who they are in a given matter follows from the document's context.

Thanks to this, a company's data is in one place. An address change is fixed once, and it is seen by all the contracts, invoices, and tickets related to it.

Contents of a contractor's file

• Identification data: name, tax identification number, address.
• Contact data: phone, e-mail, contact people.
• Related documents: invoices, contracts, tickets, and other matters pointing to this contractor.
• Comments and attachments, just as on any other record.

Example. A client calls with a question about a settlement. You open their file and see at once the issued invoices, the open tickets, and the notes from the latest arrangements, without jumping between lists.

Using the file in daily work

• You point to it on a document: an invoice, an offer, or a contract points to the contractor instead of repeating their data.
• From it you enter the history of cooperation: from the file you move to everything connected with them.
• You keep the data in one place: you fix it once, it applies everywhere.

Checking before creating a record

The most common problem in the contractor file is duplicates: the same company created twice, once with the full name, once with an abbreviation. The consequence is painful, because the history splits across two records and neither shows the full picture.

That is why before you add a contractor, look for them: by a fragment of the name or by the tax identification number. If they exist, use the existing record instead of creating another.

Statuses and archive

A contractor you no longer work with is usually not deleted, only marked as inactive. This is deliberate: historical documents must still point to an existing record. If a contractor disappeared from the list, check whether they were deactivated, instead of creating them anew.