A business partner is any external entity your organization has a commercial relationship with — the companies and people you buy from, sell to, or both.
Beelocity uses a unified partner model: suppliers and clients live in the same system. A partner can be a Supplier (you buy from them), a Client (they buy from you), or both simultaneously. This avoids duplicating contact information when you both buy from and sell to the same company — you maintain a single record with both roles.
What a Partner Record Contains
| Component | What it stores |
|---|---|
| Core identity | Name, code, tax ID, website, notes |
| Supplier details | Supplier type, status, payment terms, credit limit |
| Customer details | Customer type, status, payment terms, credit limit |
| Addresses | Multiple physical locations — billing, shipping, returns, headquarters |
| Contacts | Key people at the partner — names, roles, phone, email |
| Legal Identifiers | The registration numbers your invoices to them must carry — NIF, RC, AI |
| Categories | Hierarchical tags for organizing and filtering partners |
| Payment Terms | Agreed conditions for invoice payment |
How Partners Fit Into Beelocity
Partners connect to many other parts of the system:
- Products — your product catalog tracks which products you sell to clients and defines pricing through price lists.
- Inventory — when goods arrive at your warehouses, they come from suppliers. When goods leave, they go to clients.
- Access control — row access rules can restrict which partners a user sees, and policies can enforce rules like “cannot approve orders to partners they created”.
Navigation
Open Business Partners in the sidebar. The module opens on what needs doing (below), and the sidebar lists Partners — the partner directory, where you create, view and edit supplier and client records — and, at the end of the list, Setup.
See what needs doing
Opening Business Partners shows the partners waiting for somebody, in two lists. Each row opens the partner, and the lists are read again every time you open the page.
| List | What it shows | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Suppliers to approve | the suppliers whose status is Pending approval, in the order of the partner list | check the supplier, then set its status to Active from the pill on its page; no purchase order can be sent to it until then |
| Clients over credit limit | the clients whose unpaid invoices add up to more than their Credit limit, furthest over first, with what they owe and their limit | follow up the payments before taking a new order |
Suppliers to approve shows five rows and how many there are in all, and View all opens the partner list narrowed to them. Clients over credit limit has no such link, because the partner list cannot be narrowed to a balance. What a client owes is counted in your organization’s currency, exactly as the credit check on a sales order counts it (Other client fields). You see that list only if your role may also read sales invoices. At the top of the page, New partner starts a partner record.
Set up the module
Setup is one page for the lists your partners are classed and paid by, which you set up once and revisit when the way you sell or buy changes. It has a tab for each:
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Categories | the hierarchical category tree for classifying partners — see Categories |
| Payment Terms | the standard payment conditions you assign to partners — see Payment Terms |
Each tab keeps the address its list always had, so a bookmark still opens it. You see only the tabs your role lets you open, and with none of them Setup is not in your sidebar.