Although the system will not allow you to enter duplicate supplier names, you may inadvertently define the same supplier using two different names. For example, you might enter Orion Corporation and Orion Corp, or you might enter a contractor under his name and his company name. You might also create duplicate suppliers if you import suppliers from another accounts payable system.
If you want to know if a supplier exists, you can query the Supplier in the Suppliers page or submit the Supplier Listing by Supplier Name. When you enter an invoice, check the list of values for the Supplier field to see if your supplier exists before you enter a new supplier.
Suggestion: To avoid entering duplicate suppliers in Payables, consider developing and using standard naming conventions for suppliers, and restricting who can enter new suppliers.
Submit the following reports periodically to review your suppliers and identify duplicates:
Suppliers Report. Lists detail supplier information. Report provides multiple selection criteria and lists suppliers in alphabetical order. See: Suppliers Report.
Supplier Audit Report. Lists active suppliers whose names are the same up to a number of characters which you specify, and ignores case, spaces, special characters, etc. The report lists all sites of each possible duplicate supplier. See: Supplier Audit Report.