Suppliers
How to manage supplier balances
Updated 2026-09-11
Keep supplier payables next to the stock they deliver, so a payment request can be checked against receiving — not against memory.
Supplier relationships in retail are simple until they are not: a partial delivery, a returned carton, a payment made in cash to a rider, a reminder on the 10th. If the only record is the supplier’s WhatsApp, you will pay twice or damage a useful dealer relationship.
One list per supplier
Give each regular supplier a record in the same system as products. The supplier ledger is the payable side: what you owe after goods are received, minus what you have paid.
You do not need a full accounting suite for this. You need a balance you can open before you transfer money.
Tie payables to receiving
The clean loop is:
- Stock is low
- You create an order
- Goods arrive
- You receive them and inventory increases
- The supplier balance reflects that you now have those goods
That is the stock order workflow. If receiving and payables live in different books, month-end becomes a reconstruction project.
What not to mix
Do not dump personal expenses into a supplier ledger. Shop expenses (rent, transport, packing) are a different question from “what do we owe this distributor?”
Local first
Supplier bills should be reviewable while the delivery is still on the floor. That is another reason records sit on the device in BezPOS, with optional Drive backup rather than a live cloud payable module.