Ambivo Books User Guide
DocsUG-012
Vendors
Adding and managing vendors, defaults, Wise recipients
A vendor (or supplier) is anyone you owe money to or might pay in the future — landlords, contractors, software providers, utility companies, banks holding your debt. The vendor list drives bill entry, payable aging, vendor-level expense reporting, and payouts via Wise.
Where Vendors Live
Like customers, vendor records are shared across the Ambivo platform. The same record powers your CRM (if you track suppliers there), your Books bills, and your outgoing payments. Behind the scenes the master is in the Core Ambivo API, joined to the GL accounts in your books through proxy integration.
In the underlying data model, customers and vendors are both "accounts" with different relationship_type:
- relationship_type = 'customer' → customer
- relationship_type = 'vendor' → vendor
The same person or company can be both at the same time.
Getting There
- Click Vendors in the left sidebar (under the secondary "masters" group)
- The vendor list appears with search, filter, and pagination
Adding a Vendor
Steps
- From the Vendors list, click + New
- Fill in the basic details: Vendor name — the supplier's trading name; Company name — optional, for businesses; Email — used for sending payment confirmations; Phone — for contact; Website — optional
- Add the address: Street, City, State, Postal code, Country
- Optionally fill in: Tax Identification Number (TIN, EIN, VAT ID); D-U-N-S Number; Timezone
- (Optional) Set default accounts — see below
- (Optional) Add payment recipient details for Wise payouts — see below
- Click Save
What Happens Next
The vendor is added to your master list and is selectable on the New Bill form, the New Supplier Payment form, and the Wise Transfer form.
Vendor Default Accounts
The vendor data model supports a default expense account and a default tax code. These are used by the Core API to pre-fill new bills. A separate "default A/P account" per vendor is not exposed today — Books uses the entity-wide default A/P account.
The Books vendor form does not currently surface these account selectors directly; manage them through the Core Ambivo platform or via the API. You can always override the account on an individual bill line.
Wise Payment Recipients
When you pay a vendor via Wise, the vendor needs a recipient — Wise's term for the bank account receiving the funds. In Books today, recipients are created inline during the bill-payment flow rather than on the vendor record itself: at payment time you either pick from previously-saved recipients (if the vendor has any) or fill in the bank details on the spot, and Wise saves the recipient for next time.
A recipient typically holds:
- Account holder name and address
- Currency
- Bank country
- Account number / IBAN / sort code / SWIFT (depending on country)
A vendor can accumulate several recipients in different currencies. When you start a payment, you pick which recipient receives it.
See Transfers Sent (UG-023) for the full payout workflow.
Editing a Vendor
- Click the vendor in the list
- Click Edit on their detail page
- Update any field
- Click Save
Editing details only affects future activity. Historical bills, payments, and confirmations keep the snapshot they had at the time.
Vendor-Level Visibility
The Books Vendors screen today is a list view with create / edit. A dedicated vendor-level detail page with outstanding balance, bill history, and payment history is on the roadmap. Today, to see what you owe a vendor, run the AP Aging view (or the AP data exposed on the Dashboard) and filter by vendor name.
For per-vendor statements, use the Account Statement on your A/P account, or pull the data via the API. A polished per-vendor statement export is on the roadmap.
Importing Vendors
A bulk vendor importer is not currently exposed in the Books frontend. To migrate a vendor list:
- Add vendors in the Core Ambivo platform's import flow — they will appear in Books automatically, or
- Use the Books REST API directly
The Books-side importers today are limited to Chart of Accounts, Trial Balance, and Bank Transactions — see Data Import (UG-060).
Read-Only Mode (QuickBooks Tenants)
If your tenant has QuickBooks configured as the invoicing system of record, the Create / Update / Delete actions on bills (and any reflected vendor changes) are blocked from inside Books. The vendor list itself is generally still editable, but check Settings to confirm. See QuickBooks Migration and Read-Only Mode (UG-090).
Common Questions
Can the same record be both a customer and a vendor?
Yes — set both relationship types. The contact info is shared; the GL postings stay separate (customer side hits A/R and Revenue; vendor side hits A/P and Expense).
Can I delete a vendor?
Only if they have no posted transactions. Otherwise deactivate them on the detail page.
How do I see how much we owe a vendor?
Open the vendor and read the Outstanding balance at the top, or run the AP Aging report to see all vendors at once.
How do I pay a vendor?
Either record a manual payment in Payments Received (yes, the page covers both directions despite the name — see Payments Received (UG-022)), or initiate a Wise transfer from Bills or Transfers Sent (UG-023).
What if my vendor wants to be paid in a different currency?
Add a recipient in that currency. Wise handles the FX. Multi-currency must be enabled on the entity for the foreign-currency bill to be recorded properly.
My vendor changed banks — what do I do?
Add a new recipient to the vendor with the new bank details. Mark the old one inactive. The next payout will offer the new recipient by default.
Tips and Best Practices
- Set a default expense account per vendor. This is the single biggest data-entry speed-up in AP.
- Capture the vendor's TIN / EIN early. You will need it for 1099 filings (US) or VAT reporting elsewhere.
- Use one vendor record per legal entity, not one per invoice. "Acme Corp" should be one vendor receiving 12 monthly bills, not 12 vendors.
- Attach a Wise recipient before the first bill is due. Setting it up after a deadline is stressful.
- Deactivate vendors you stop using rather than deleting them — the history is required for tax.