Oracle Supplier Overview

You must define a supplier before performing most activities within Purchasing and Payables.

•You optionally enter a recommended supplier on a requisition.

•You need a supplier to issue a request for quotation.

•You use that same supplier when you enter a quotation.

•You need supplier information for purchase orders.

•You receive goods or services from suppliers.

•You return goods to suppliers.

•You must pay the supplier for the goods or services purchased.

Set up suppliers to record information about individuals and companies you purchase goods and services from.  You can also enter employees you reimburse for expense reports.  You can designate supplier sites as pay sites, purchasing sites, RFQ only sites, or procurement card sites.  For example, for a single supplier, you can buy from several different sites and send payments to several different sites.  Most supplier information automatically defaults to all supplier sites to facilitate supplier site entry.  However, you can override these defaults and have unique information for each site.

Note that the basic supplier definition is now managed by Trading Community Architecture (TCA), which is the central engine for managing Trading Partner information in E-Business Suite. TCA provides a single common definition that can be used to identify customers, suppliers, and organizations that provide you with goods or services, and are in turn, a customer of your own products or services. The TCA repository stores the key elements that define an organization, identity, business locations, and key contacts, so that different Oracle products use a common trading partner definition.