Supplier and trade
account list.

Why most supplier lists are useless

Nearly every studio has one. It is nearly always a name, a website and a phone number, which is information you could have found in ten seconds without it. What is missing is the part that took two years to learn: that this one gives 30 percent but only if you ask, that this one quotes six weeks and delivers in nine, that this one will not send samples unless you have an account, and that this one needs chasing on day three or it does not happen.

Designers tend to work with the same fifteen to twenty suppliers over and over. That is a small enough set to record properly, and valuable enough that losing it when someone leaves the studio genuinely hurts. This template is shaped around recording the learned things rather than the findable ones.

The related failure, and the one that costs money, is presenting a piece to a client, getting it approved, and then not being able to remember which supplier it came from. We wrote about how to stop that happening in how to keep track of which supplier had which product.

What is in it

Supplier

The trading name you would actually say out loud, not the legal entity.

Website

The trade page if there is one, the shop page if there is not.

Category

Lighting, furniture, materials, soft goods, kitchen and bath, hardware, art and objets, outdoor. Preset as a dropdown.

Trade account?

Yes, No, Applied, Rejected. Knowing which ones rejected you is worth as much as knowing which accepted.

Trade discount %

What you were actually given. Designers commonly report 20 to 40 percent, with 25 as the usual sweet spot.

Account number

So you are not digging through email at the point of ordering.

Rep name, email, phone

Three columns, because the person who answers is not always the address on the website.

Typical lead time

What they quote.

Actual lead time last order

What happened. This is the one column that turns a supplier list into planning data.

Samples free?

Yes, No, Chargeable, Refundable. Sample policy decides who you specify from more often than price does.

Minimum order

The number that quietly rules a supplier out of small residential jobs.

Payment terms

Pro forma, 30 days, deposit split.

Delivery notes

Kerbside, two-person, booked slot, whether they will hold stock.

Last used

Sort on this once a year and archive anything untouched for twelve months.

Rating out of 5

Your own, not a review score.

Notes

The thing you will forget. Chase after three days. Finishes photograph badly. Will hold stock if you ask nicely.

What it will not do

It will not find you new suppliers. It records the ones you already use. If you want discovery, that is a directory, and the trade bodies run better ones than any spreadsheet.

It will not raise a purchase order, chase a delivery or reconcile an invoice. That is procurement software and it costs considerably more than a spreadsheet, for good reasons.

And it will not help you find a product again once you have forgotten who made it, which is the specific failure a spreadsheet cannot solve. That is what a vendor card built automatically from what you save and searching your library by colour are for.

Questions, answered.

Is this actually free, and do I have to give you an email address?

It is free and there is no email wall. The download is a direct link to the file. We are not going to add you to anything, because a gate in front of a spreadsheet buys a low-intent address and costs the recommendation, which is worth more.

What format is it in?

Excel (.xlsx), which opens in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice and Google Sheets. Dropdowns on the category, trade account and samples columns survive the trip into Google Sheets. Formatting largely does too.

Why record two different lead times?

Because the quoted lead time is marketing and the one you measured is planning data. Keep both and the gap between them tells you which suppliers to build a programme around and which to order early from.

What trade discount should I expect?

It varies by category and by how much you spend, but designers commonly report 20 to 40 percent, with 25 percent as the usual middle. Some report not bothering with suppliers offering only 10 percent, because the margin does not support the admin.

Can I share it with my team?

Yes. Copy it, edit it, rename it, put it on a shared drive, strip out the columns you do not use. There is no licence to read and nothing to attribute.

When does a spreadsheet stop being the right answer?

When you start needing to find things rather than record them. A spreadsheet sorts beautifully and searches badly. The moment you are trying to remember which supplier had the chalky green sconce, a column has stopped being enough.