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Vendor Partners

Everything you need to know about using the Vendor Partners functionality

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Written by Ashok P
Updated over 2 months ago

Vendor Partners provide pricing (Unit Cost) for many of their products. This feature is only available for U.S., Canadian, United Kingdom, Australian, and New Zealand customers.

You can access this feature within the Vendor Explorer, Product Explorer, and Add Products from Library interfaces.

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Vendor partner pricing accounts for the Unit of Measure (UOM) and UOM unit values set on a product's Order tab.

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This could cause issues if you do not sell/price your speakers as singles. Many SI users enter pricing for speakers as single units even though they are bought in pairs, primarily for accurate drawings in Visio or AutoCAD.

Bulk Wire—Wire that comes in a box, for example, may have a unit cost of $100, UOM of "Box," and UOM unit set to 500. The unit cost that will be transferred to SI will be $.05, and the UOM and UOM unit will populate the fields in SI.

Speakers—Speakers sold in pairs will also respect the UOM and UOM unit in Vendor Partner data. If a pair of speakers has a Unit Cost of $100, a UOM of "Pair," and a UOM unit of 2, the unit cost will populate as $50, and the UOM and UOM unit will populate the fields in SI.

Other Items Sold in Bulk—Anything sold in bulk, such as faceplates or connectors, will also respect the UOM and UOM unit in Vendor Partner data.

A UOM for Partner Cost option on the Price tab for products allows you to decide whether and how to use the UOM fields to determine the unit cost for vendor partner pricing updates.

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Default = Use Partner UOM. If a product has a unit of measure (UOM) from a vendor partner, the unit cost of the product will be divided by the UOM when you update pricing from the vendor partner. If, for any reason, you prefer to manually set your UOM units in SI vs. relying on the vendor partner data, choose the "Use SI UOM" option. Lastly, if you do not want the unit cost from a vendor partner to be divided by UOM, choose "Ignore UOM."

In addition, any of these items sold in a different unit than the one you purchased will populate the Purchase Cost field on the Order tab with the unit cost provided by the vendor partner, not divided by the UOM.

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Connect

First, ensure that the correct email addresses are entered in the "Admin" user account and Company Information settings. The default email address is "guest@d-tools.com," which may delay connecting to a vendor.

To receive pricing from a vendor partner, you must sign up and create an account with them. Then, you can manage your connection by clicking the Connect button.

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This will open the Connect to Vendor Partners dialog.

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Select a vendor you want to connect with. If they have a webpage where you can sign up as a dealer, the Sign Up button will be active, taking you to their site.

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Once you receive your account number from the vendor (or if you already have this information), select the vendor in the list and click the Connect button.

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You will be prompted to enter your account number and billing zip code.

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If you are not already a dealer for the selected vendor or entered incorrect information above, you will be asked if you want to request approval from the vendor.

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Once a request has been sent, the status will display as "Pending."

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Once approved, the vendor will display a status of "Approved," and your Pricing Tier will appear. Every vendor has its own price tiers and naming conventions.

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Once connected, any products (for which the Vendor provides pricing) you download from that Vendor will be imported with the Unit Cost field populated. A checkmark will appear next to the Partner Set Cost column. If you manually change the unit cost, the checkmark will be removed.

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The vendor will be associated with the product, and the Preferred Vendor field will also be set.

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If you downloaded any products from this vendor before connecting to them as a vendor partner, you can select the vendor in the list and click the Find Products with Pricing Provided by Partner button. This will find all existing products with vendor pricing available and list them.

Click the Update button to get the pricing and set the preferred vendor.

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Moving forward, you will use the Update Pricing functions described below to keep your pricing up to date.

Update Pricing

Click the Schedule Price Updates button to set your preferences for price updates.

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Here, you can set the frequency for automatic updates, choose which of your Price Types you want the unit cost to be populated for, and choose your preference for what happens to your unit price when the unit cost is updated.

Vendor Partner price update logs can be viewed in the Control Panel.

You can update pricing at any time by selecting one or more vendor partners, clicking the Update Pricing button, and choosing Selected or All.

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