Every purchase order, receipt, invoice, credit memo, and return we’ve covered in this series starts in the same place: a vendor record. Get vendor setup right and the rest of payables mostly runs itself. Get it wrong and you’ll be fixing posting accounts and payment terms one transaction at a time.
We’ve spent five rounds moving paper and product — orders, receipts, invoices, credits, and returns. In Round 13 of the Functionality Face-Off, we meet the vendors themselves.
How It Works in Dynamics GP: Vendor Maintenance and Friends
GP’s vendor setup lives in the Vendor Maintenance window, covered in Microsoft’s Payables Management guide:
- Go to Cards > Purchasing > Vendor.
- First big decision: the Vendor ID. Choose carefully — it’s permanent. GP IDs can’t be renamed later without a special tool, so most shops keep a naming convention document just for this.
- Assign a Class ID. Vendor classes are GP’s answer to consistency — the class fills in payment terms, posting accounts, and other defaults you set up earlier in Vendor Class Setup.
- Enter the name and address. Multiple addresses (purchase, remit-to, ship-from) each get their own Address ID in a separate window.
- Click Options to open another window for payment terms, checkbook, tax details, and 1099 settings.
- Click Accounts for yet another window — the default general ledger accounts for this vendor’s purchases.
- Save. A complete vendor typically means touching three to five windows.
It’s a proven system, and vendor classes were ahead of their time. But the setup is spread out: the main card, the address window, Options, Accounts — and if the class defaults change later, you decide whether to “roll down” the change to every vendor in the class.
How It Works in Business Central: Pick a Template, Fill One Card
BC compresses all of that into one page and a template, per Microsoft Learn:
- Search (Alt+Q) for Vendors and choose New.
- If you’ve set up vendor templates (say, “Domestic supplier,” “Foreign supplier,” “Contractor”), BC asks which one to use — and prefills posting groups, payment terms, currency, and more. One template? BC just applies it.
- The vendor number assigns itself from a number series — no naming-convention meeting required. And the name is just a field; change it any time.
- Fill in the rest on one card: address and contact on one fast tab, posting details on the Invoicing fast tab, payment method and terms on Payments, default location on Receiving. Required fields are marked; everything else is optional.
- Done — the vendor is ready for purchase documents immediately.
Two extras GP users will appreciate: any well-filled vendor card can be saved as a new template with Save as Template, and an existing template can be applied to a batch of vendors later with Apply Template — the “roll down” decision, but on your terms. If the vendor started life as a contact in your CRM pipeline, you can create the vendor straight from the contact card, no retyping.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|
| Feature | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Main setup | Vendor Maintenance + Options + Accounts windows | One Vendor Card with fast tabs |
| Vendor ID | Manual, permanent — choose wisely | Auto-assigned from a number series |
| Consistency tool | Vendor classes (set up first) | Vendor templates (create from any card) |
| Defaults applied | From class at creation; roll down later | From template at creation; Apply Template later |
| Multiple addresses | Separate Address ID windows | Order Address entries on the card |
| Rename a vendor | ID fixed without special tools | Name is editable any time |
| From CRM contact | Manual re-entry | Create vendor from contact |
Why BC Comes Out Ahead
- One card, not five windows. Everything about the vendor — posting, payments, receiving, addresses — lives on one page you can scan top to bottom.
- No permanent-ID anxiety. GP veterans know the pain of a vendor ID typo that lives forever. BC numbers vendors automatically and lets names change freely.
- Templates are self-service. A GP vendor class is a setup task; a BC template is just a vendor card you liked enough to save. New vendor type? Any power user can make the template in a minute.
- Master data stays consistent. Templates prefill the accounting fields people get wrong — posting groups, terms, currency — so AP doesn’t inherit cleanup work.
Start Your Payables on the Right Foot
Clean vendor master data is the quiet foundation under every payables process — and it’s one of the first things we migrate when a client moves from GP to BC. The Aisling Dynamics team has done that mapping many times, classes to templates included.
Contact us or call (251) 293-0555 — and come back tomorrow for Round 14, the one everyone actually cares about: paying vendors. GP check runs vs. BC payment journals.