What is sharing a supplier between Cost Centres in tspoonlab, and how do you do it?
Sharing a supplier between Cost Centres in tspoonlab links one supplier record to several Cost Centres at once. This article covers how to turn sharing on, how to stop sharing without losing your delivery notes and invoices, and how it differs from replicating or copying a supplier.
This article is for businesses that manage several Cost Centres in tspoonlab, such as restaurant groups, chains or companies with more than one site. To edit a supplier's Cost Centres, you need edit permissions for the Suppliers module.
In tspoonlab, sharing a supplier means linking one supplier record to several Cost Centres at the same time. No copies or duplicates are created: there's a single supplier in the database, and all its purchasing information â delivery notes, invoices, price history â belongs to that same record, even though you view and use it from different Cost Centres.
That's why any change you make on a shared supplier's page â contact details, prices, purchasing terms â updates automatically and in real time across every Cost Centre it's shared with. There's no "original" supplier and several "copies": it's the same tspoonlab supplier, visible from multiple Cost Centres at once.
How do you share a supplier with another Cost Centre in tspoonlab?
To share a supplier with another Cost Centre in tspoonlab, follow these steps from the Suppliers module. The first step is finding the "Cost Centres" block on the supplier's page.
Go to "Management" and then "Suppliers". Select the supplier you want to share from the list.
On the supplier's page, find the "Cost Centres" block in the right-hand column. Click the three-dot menu and select "Edit".
In the pop-up window, click the "Cost Centres" field and select each Cost Centre you want to share this supplier with. To share it with every Cost Centre on your account, click "Add all".
Click "Ok" to save your changes. The window closes and you'll see the added Cost Centres listed in the "Cost Centres" block on the supplier's page. From this point, the shared supplier is visible from all of those Cost Centres.
đą Important: if you stop sharing a supplier with a Cost Centre by removing it with the red cross in the edit window, you'll lose all the purchasing information for that supplier at that Cost Centre, including every delivery note and invoice you've uploaded. This can't be undone. Before you do this, move the supplier from shared to replicated using the steps below.
Move a shared supplier to replicated
If you need to stop sharing a supplier with a Cost Centre but want to keep its purchase history, don't delete it â move it from shared to replicated instead. tspoonlab keeps everything already recorded and sets up a one-way relationship between Cost Centres, where changes flow from the "parent" Cost Centre to the "child". The option to do this is in the same "Cost Centres" block on the supplier's page.
On the supplier's page, go to the "Cost Centres" block, click the three-dot menu and select "Move shared supplier to replicated".
In the pop-up window, select the Cost Centre that will become the replicated one (the "child") and click "Start" to run the action.
A second pop-up window opens, asking you to confirm that you want to move the supplier from shared to replicated at that Cost Centre, and warning that this can't be undone. Click "Yes" to confirm, or "No" to cancel.
Once you confirm, the Cost Centre you started from becomes the "parent" supplier (the one that replicates), and the Cost Centre you selected becomes the "child" (the replicated one). From then on, changes you make to the supplier at the "parent" Cost Centre carry over to the "child", but not the other way round, and each Cost Centre keeps its own delivery note and invoice history.
Differences between sharing, replicating and copying a supplier in tspoonlab
tspoonlab gives you three ways to make a supplier available at other Cost Centres. They can look similar, but each follows different logic. Here's how purchasing information behaves in each case:
Share a supplier: there's a single supplier, visible and editable equally from every Cost Centre it's shared with. There's no hierarchy between them, and any change applies to all of them at once, in real time.
Replicate a supplier: there's a "parent" (master) Cost Centre where you make changes, and these carry over one-way to the "child" (replicated) Cost Centres. Information flows only from parent to "child", never the other way round.
Copy a supplier: an exact, independent copy of the supplier is created at the Cost Centre you choose. From then on, the original supplier and the copy work completely independently, with no relationship between them.
đ Note: a shared supplier only exists once in tspoonlab, so you can't set different prices or terms per Cost Centre. If you need each Cost Centre to have its own prices or terms for that supplier, use replicating or copying instead of sharing.
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