Managing Partners

Creating a Partner

1. Go to Business Partners > Partners and click New.
2. Fill in the core identity fields:
   • Name — the partner’s legal or trading name (e.g., “Sarl El Baraka Import-Export”).
   • Code — a unique short identifier for your reference (e.g., SUP-001 or BARAKA). This is how the partner is referenced throughout the system.
   • Tax identifier — the partner’s tax identification number (NIF in Algeria), useful for invoicing and compliance.
   • Website — the partner’s web address (optional).
   • Notes — any free-text information about the relationship (optional).
3. Choose the partner’s role — Supplier, Client, or both.
4. Fill in the role-specific details (see below).
5. Save.

After creating the partner, you can add addresses, contacts, and assign categories from the partner’s dedicated page. Suppliers also have two extra tabs — Supplier Products (the supplier’s catalog of items you buy from them, with SKUs, prices, lead times, and minimum order quantities) and Performance (periodic scorecards covering on-time delivery, quality rating, and defect rate). These tabs only appear once the Supplier role is enabled on the partner.

What gets filled in automatically. Each time a goods receipt for this supplier is completed, Beelocity updates the matching Supplier Products row with the latest Last Purchase Price and Last Purchase Date from the receipt. When the parent purchase order reaches Completed (everything received), the supplier’s Performance scorecard for the current calendar quarter is rolled forward — total orders, total order value, on-time delivery, fulfillment rate, and defect rate are all recomputed automatically. Quality rating and average response time stay fully manual. Switching a Supplier Products row off also drops its Preferred mark, so the item’s preferred slot is free for a supplier you can still order from — and the row comes back unmarked if you switch it on again.

Supplier Details

When a partner is marked as a supplier, you can configure these supplier-specific fields:

Supplier Type

The supplier type describes the partner’s position in your supply chain:

Supplier Status

The status controls whether the supplier is available for new business:

Other Supplier Fields

• Payment terms — the default payment conditions for purchases from this supplier (e.g., Net 30, 2/10 Net 30). These are pre-filled on new purchase orders to save time.
• Credit limit — a reference ceiling for the outstanding balance with this supplier. Informational: it helps buyers track exposure but does not block purchase orders.

Client Details

When a partner is marked as a client, you can configure these client-specific fields:

Client Type

The client type describes the nature of the commercial relationship:

Client Status

Other Client Fields

• Payment terms — the default payment conditions for sales to this client.
• Credit limit — the maximum outstanding balance this client is allowed to carry. It takes effect when an approval workflow with a credit-check rule is configured (see Configuring workflows): orders that would exceed the limit route to approval instead of confirming. Without such a workflow it is informational.

Changing a Status

A partner’s status is not changed in the edit form. It is changed on the partner’s own page, from the pill in the strip along the bottom: one pill per role the partner has, each labelled with its role when the partner is both a supplier and a client. Click a pill to see every status it can move to, pick one, and confirm.

Unlike a quotation or a purchase order, a partner shows no row of stages. Every status is one move from every other, in both directions, and none of them is an ending: a blacklisted supplier goes back to Active in one click, and a supplier that has traded for years can be put back to Pending approval when something needs re-checking. That is deliberate — a partner’s status says what the relationship is today, not how far along something has got.

The Active switch is a different thing again, and it lives under More actions (the three dots) as Deactivate and Activate. The status says what the relationship is; the switch says whether the partner is offered anywhere at all.

Finding a partner

The Partners list narrows on its filter button by Supplier / Client, the supplier and client Type and Status, Payment Terms, Currency, Active, or a credit-limit band — “suppliers pending approval” is two picks (Working with lists). A partner’s own tabs filter the same way: addresses by type, country, default and active; contacts by primary and active; identifiers by active and order; categories by category; supplier products by product, unit, currency, preferred, active, a price, quantity or lead-time band or a last-purchase window — “preferred only, lead time under a week” is what a buyer asks; performance by period, currency or any of the rates.

Dual-Role Partners

A partner marked as both supplier and client has two independent sets of details. This is common in practice — for example, a company that manufactures packaging materials (you buy packaging from them) and also purchases your finished goods for distribution.

Each role has its own type, status, payment terms, and credit limit — and its own pill at the bottom of the page. Changing the supplier status does not affect the client status, and vice versa. Turning a role off clears that role’s own fields: a supplier that stops being one keeps nothing of its supplier terms or credit limit, so no report can read a figure the relationship no longer has.

Deactivation

Partners are never deleted from the system. Instead, you deactivate them by moving the pill to Inactive (or Blacklisted for suppliers). Deactivated partners:

• No longer appear in active selection lists (e.g., when creating a new order).
• Remain in the system with their full history — all past transactions, addresses, and contacts are preserved.
• Can be reactivated later if the relationship resumes.

This approach ensures that historical records always have a valid partner reference, even years later.

System Partners

Some partners are created by Beelocity itself. The one you will meet is the Walk-in Customer (code WALKIN): the Point of Sale creates it the first time a register sells to an anonymous customer, and the shift’s anonymous sales are invoiced against it when the session closes.

System partners are managed for you:

• Their identity is locked. The code, name and active flag cannot be changed, and the row cannot be deleted — invoices and receipts from past shifts depend on it. Other details (notes, payment terms) stay editable.
• They stay out of customer lists. When you pick a client on a quotation, order, invoice, delivery, return or payment, the walk-in customer is not offered — anonymous sales only ever reach it through the register. Documents that already reference it still display its name normally.

Tips

• Set up payment terms first — before creating your partner directory, define your standard payment terms (Net 30, Net 60, etc.) so they are ready to assign.
• Use meaningful codes — partner codes appear throughout the system. SUP-BARAKA is more recognizable than P00147 when scanning a list of purchase orders.
• Fill in tax IDs — even if not required immediately, having the tax ID on file saves time when generating invoices or tax reports later.
• Use categories for organization — if you have more than a dozen partners, categories help you group them; the partner’s Categories tab filters by category, and the category’s Children tab filters by active.
• Review partner statuses periodically — mark inactive partners as such to keep your active lists clean and your team focused on current relationships.