How to Archive a Vendor

When you stop using a vendor, archive them. They come out of the everyday list and out of the pickers you see when recording a bill, and everything you have ever recorded against them stays exactly as it was.

There is no delete, on purpose

Vendors are attached to real bills and real payments. Deleting one would tear a hole in your history and break your reports. So nothing here is ever deleted. Archiving is the only way to retire a vendor, and it is reversible.

You need the accounting configuration permission.

Steps

1. Open the Vendors card and click Manage.
2. Click the Accounting vendor you want to retire.
3. Choose Archive in the editor.
4. Read what the confirmation tells you, then confirm.

If the vendor is on recurring bills

If the vendor is attached to recurring expense schedules, the first attempt does not archive anything. Instead it lists exactly which schedules are affected, so you can see what stopping this vendor would stop.

The confirmation when recurring schedules are involved:

Confirming a second time with Archive and stop them is what actually does it. Nothing was changed by the first attempt, so backing out at this point leaves everything running.

Service vendors are archived in Operations

A Service vendor cannot be archived from this screen, and you will not see an archive option on one. Because that vendor also carries work orders, insurance and dispatch history, retiring it is an Operations decision. Do it from the vendor's record in Operations.

Bringing an archived vendor back

Switch on Show archived in the panel to see them again, dimmed and marked. You can also restore one by adding a vendor with the same name, which offers to bring the original back rather than creating a duplicate.

Messages you might see

Related articles

• How to add a vendor
• Troubleshooting