Vendor Management
Every vendor visit, quote and bill in one place
When a spare-parts supplier's GST certificate has expired and nobody notices until a GST audit, or when an AMC contractor keeps getting work despite three missed breakdown visits, the problem isn't the vendor — it's that vendor records live in a spreadsheet, a filing cabinet, and someone's memory, never in one place. AssetAI gives every supplier and service contractor a single record that the rest of the plant — service calls, spares, assets — can actually point to.
What a vendor record holds
Each vendor gets an auto-generated code and sits under a company code, with a type of spare parts, service, or both. Against that sits PAN, GST number, payment terms, currency (INR by default), and an active flag — the basic commercial identity a plant needs before anyone raises a service call against them.
Below that are the structured blocks that matter on the floor, not just in accounts:
- Contact details for the person who actually picks up the phone at 2 AM
- Three addresses — registered, billing, service — with same-as toggles so you're not retyping the same address three times for a local contractor
- Service coverage area and a 24x7 emergency flag, useful when a compressor goes down on a Sunday and you need to know who's on call
- Bank details, kept with the record for payment reference
- Service capability: authorised-dealer status, OEM association, AMC availability, SLA hours, and warranty support
None of this is decorative. A maintenance planner deciding who to call for a gearbox failure can see, in one screen, whether the vendor is OEM-authorised, whether an AMC is active, and what SLA hours were agreed — without digging through email threads.
Compliance documents, without the chase
Every vendor record has seven fixed document slots: GST certificate, PAN card, bank proof, trade licence, insurance, agreement/AMC, and cancelled cheque. Each slot takes one PDF or image file up to 8 MB. That's it — one file per slot, so there's no ambiguity about which version is current.
This matters more in Indian plants than the paperwork suggests. Trade licences lapse, insurance certificates expire mid-contract, and a contractor's GST status can change without anyone in maintenance hearing about it. Having these seven documents attached to the vendor record — instead of scattered across a purchase officer's inbox — means an auditor or a new plant head can check compliance in minutes, not by calling five people.
What this is not: AssetAI does not validate GST, PAN or IFSC formats, does not run e-invoicing, and does not do tax computation or accounting integration. It stores the document and the number as entered — it is not a compliance-checking or accounting system, and it doesn't pretend to be one.
Gating new vendors behind approval
Plants that want a second pair of eyes on every new supplier can turn on the vendor approval flow. With it enabled, a new vendor is created in a pending state and an approval request opens before the record goes live. With it off, vendors are auto-approved on save — useful for smaller shops where the maintenance head is the only person who'd sign off anyway.
Once a vendor is approved, it stays approved unless someone blocks it. Blocking (and unblocking) requires a reason of 3 to 255 characters — long enough to be a real explanation, not a placeholder dash. A blocked vendor stays on record, so history and documents aren't lost, but the intent is clear: this vendor shouldn't get new work until someone unblocks them. This is deliberately a gate, not a scorecard — more on that below.
Where vendor records get used
A vendor isn't a standalone entry — it's referenced across the rest of the system:
- Service calls are raised against a vendor
- The Service master links to vendors for recurring work
- Spares carry a preferred-supplier field pointing to a vendor
- An asset's supplier, AMC vendor, and service vendor fields all pull from the vendor master
Because of these links, deletion is refused if a vendor is used by any asset — the UI directs you to mark it inactive instead. This protects history: you don't want an asset's AMC vendor field pointing at a record that no longer exists three years into a warranty dispute.
Finding the right vendor is a simple search across name, code and GST number — no filters to configure, no separate vendor directory to maintain outside the system.
What it deliberately leaves out
Being upfront about limits is more useful than a features list that oversells. AssetAI's vendor management does not include:
- Vendor rating, scorecards, or performance history — work-order and service-call outcomes are not aggregated per vendor, even though SLA hours are stored on the record
- RFQ, quotation comparison or purchase orders — the only priced document tied to a vendor is a single quote amount entered on a service call
- A vendor portal or vendor login — vendors are records maintained by your team, not users who log in
If your plant runs a formal procurement cycle with RFQs, competitive quotes and PO approval chains, that workflow needs to sit outside this module — this is built for maintenance teams keeping supplier and AMC-contractor records straight, not for a procurement desk. And if you're trying to measure vendor SLA performance the way you'd track OEE or plant-level reliability, that number isn't computed here — SLA hours are stored as a field, not measured against actuals.
Who this is built for
This module fits maintenance teams at Indian manufacturing plants who need supplier and contractor records, compliance documents, and an approval or block mechanism in one place, without the overhead of a full procurement suite. If that's the gap you're trying to close, see how it sits alongside the rest of the features — including asset records that reference these same vendors — or look at use-cases close to your plant's setup. For a broader look at how this fits into a maintenance system generally, what is a CMMS is a reasonable starting point, and plants formalising documentation for ISO audits will find the seven-slot compliance store directly useful. To see it against your vendor list, book a demo.
Getting vendor data in the first place
Most plants don't start with clean vendor data — they start with a shared Excel file with a few hundred rows, half of them stale, and a WhatsApp thread where the actual AMC contractor's number lives. Migrating that into AssetAI is mechanical, not magical: someone has to sit with each row, assign it a type (spare parts, service, or both), attach whatever compliance documents exist, and decide who owns approval going forward. Budget a few days for this, not an afternoon — the value of a vendor master comes entirely from what's filled in, and a record with a blank GST slot is only marginally better than the spreadsheet it replaced.
Where teams trip up
- Treating "block" as "delete." Blocking keeps the vendor on record with a reason attached — exactly what you want when a contractor missed three breakdown visits and you don't want work assigned to them, but you also don't want to lose the history. Deletion is a different, rarer action, and AssetAI refuses it outright if any asset still points to that vendor.
- Skipping the approval flow because it feels like red tape. If your plant has been burned by an unvetted contractor signing an AMC with an expired insurance certificate, enabling approval on new vendors — so the record sits pending until someone checks it — is worth the extra click.
- Assuming SLA hours are being tracked against something. They're stored on the vendor record as a stated capability, not measured against actual response times. If a contractor claims a 4-hour SLA, AssetAI won't flag it when they take 14 — that comparison has to happen in your own review process, not the software.
- Expecting GST or PAN format checks to catch typos. They won't. AssetAI validates that name, code, type, and contact email are present and correct in form, but PAN, GST, and IFSC strings are stored as entered. A wrong digit in a GST number will sit there until someone notices during an audit.
Where vendor management stops
This module keeps supplier and contractor records straight — it doesn't run procurement. There's no RFQ, no side-by-side quotation comparison, and no purchase order trail; the only price that ever attaches to a vendor is a single quote amount on a service call. If your plant issues formal POs against multiple vendor quotes for a spares tender, that process lives outside AssetAI, at least for now — check /features for what else the platform covers around spares and inventory.
There's also no vendor scorecard, no login, and no portal. Vendors are records the maintenance team maintains, not users who log in to submit invoices or bids. Procurement-heavy plants — especially those benchmarking suppliers formally, the kind of practice covered in broader TPM programs — will need a separate system for that layer. What AssetAI does give you is the plumbing every other maintenance workflow depends on: a vendor a work order can point to, a supplier a spare part can prefer, and a contractor an asset's AMC field can name — all searchable by name, code, or GST number, with access split cleanly between vendors.view and vendors.manage so a storekeeper can look up a number without being able to block a vendor by mistake.
Vendor Management FAQs
How can I tell if an AMC contractor is repeatedly missing breakdown SLAs instead of relying on someone's memory?
You check it against the service calls logged directly under that vendor's record, not against a separate log. Every vendor profile carries an SLA-hours field alongside its service-capability details, and because service calls in the CMMS point back to the vendor code rather than a free-text name, each visit — on time or late — sits against that same record. A planner reviewing the vendor before raising the next call sees the pattern of missed versus met SLAs in one place instead of piecing it together from memory or a filing cabinet. It doesn't auto-flag a "bad" vendor — it just makes the visit history visible against the commitment.
Can the same vendor record be used across multiple plants under one company?
Yes, because a vendor sits under a company code rather than being tied to one plant location. If several plants share the same company code, they can point their service calls and spares transactions to the same vendor record instead of each site re-entering PAN, GST, bank details, and contact information separately. This matters for AMC contractors or OEM dealers who service more than one facility in a group — the commercial identity stays single-source, and only plant-specific fields like service address or coverage area need adjusting per site. It reduces duplicate vendor codes floating around for what is actually one supplier, which is a common source of confusion in multi-plant use cases.
How do I get warned before a supplier's GST certificate or insurance actually lapses?
The vendor record itself doesn't push expiry alerts today — what it does is hold the GST number, PAN, and an active flag in the same place the rest of the plant already looks when raising a service call or checking spares. Because that information sits on the record rather than in a separate compliance file, a planner or admin reviewing vendors periodically can catch an expired certificate before it turns into an audit finding, rather than after. For plants formalising this review against ISO or internal audit cycles, having GST and PAN on the same screen as service history at least removes the "which cabinet is that in" step.
How does AssetAI connect a vendor to the spare parts they supply?
Through the vendor type field, which marks a vendor as spare parts, service, or both — that classification is what other modules use to point back to the vendor. A spare part record can reference its supplying vendor, so when stock runs low or a part needs reordering, the plant already has that vendor's payment terms, currency, and contact details on hand instead of hunting through purchase files. This is part of how vendor records function as a shared reference point across the CMMS rather than a standalone contacts list — spares, service calls, and assets all resolve back to the same vendor code.
Can I stop sending work to a vendor without deleting their record and losing history?
Yes — toggling the active flag on a vendor record takes them out of consideration for new service calls without removing their past data. Every AMC visit, spares transaction, or asset link already recorded against that vendor code stays intact, since the flag only controls whether the vendor is available to select going forward, not whether historical entries exist. This matters when a contractor is being phased out over a dispute or performance issue but the plant still needs their service history for audits or warranty claims. If you want to see how this sits alongside the rest of vendor management, it's worth walking through in a demo.
How do I compare which contractors can actually respond to an emergency breakdown at night?
You look at the 24x7 emergency flag and SLA-hours field together, since both sit on the same vendor record as service coverage area. A planner filtering vendors for a given equipment type can see which ones have marked emergency availability and what response time they've committed to, rather than calling around to check who's reachable. Authorised-dealer status and OEM association sit alongside this, useful when the failure is on OEM-specific equipment and warranty support matters. None of this predicts who will actually show up — it just puts the information a planner needs to decide who to call in one structured place instead of scattered across industries-specific contact lists.
When we switch vendors mid-year, how do we track which contractor actually performed the maintenance work we're claiming for GST input credit?
AssetAI maintains a complete audit trail linking each work order to the vendor who executed it, with dates and amounts. When you mark a vendor as inactive, all historical records remain searchable and reportable. This ensures your GST documentation always shows which contractor performed which maintenance, even after you've moved to a replacement vendor.
See Vendor Management on your own machines
A 30-minute demo on your plant, not our slides.