Supplier Locations

A supplier location is not a physical address. It is a default set of rules, or attributes, that define how you conduct business with a particular supplier. A supplier location comprises information such as procurement options (including payment terms, currency information, and shipping method), VAT options, payment options, withholding options, pay to bank accounts, and so on. And although a location is not an address, it does reference addresses.

Your supplier may need only one location. If the supplier uses the same set of rules across its business, you can enter one location for your supplier, and you're ready to go. If, however, your supplier uses different sets of procurement rules for different portions of its business (different branches, sites, or offices, for example), PeopleSoft procurement products enable you to set up the supplier with multiple locations, each with its own unique set of business rules.

If, for example, company ABC has offices in New York, Vancouver, and London, each office may require different currency information, payment terms, pay to bank accounts, VAT or sales and use tax (SUT) requirements, and so on. In this case, you could set up the supplier with three locations (that is, three sets of rules—one for each office).

Suppliers may also have unique requirements for pricing and remitting. For this reason, from each supplier location, you can also point to other supplier locations for remitting and pricing. (The supplier's invoice information and payment terms reside at the supplier location level, so it makes sense to determine the remitting and pricing rules here.)

If your supplier has only one address from which it conducts all its procurement functions (ordering, invoicing, remitting, and returning), enter the one address on the Supplier Information - Address page; the system uses this address as the default for all of the functions on the Supplier Information - Location page. Some suppliers have different addresses for different procurement functions. For this reason, the system enables you to enter several different addresses for each supplier location.

Returning to the previous example, company ABC's offices may each have multiple addresses for ordering, invoicing, remitting, and returning. Because they have different procurement rules, each office has its own location; because each location may have different addresses for different business transactions, each location can have multiple addresses.

In summary, a supplier can have many physical addresses. A location can also have many addresses. Equally, addresses can be shared between locations. Some suppliers may not be this complicated; they may only require one location and one address. Other suppliers may have several locations and addresses. The PeopleSoft system accommodates both types of suppliers.