Note: in order to have access to the Engage Partners section and the list of Suppliers, you need to have the Supply Chain Engagement product enabled.
Uploading Suppliers to Altruistiq
Suppliers are extracted from your Purchases activity data in the Altruistiq platform. There is no way to add suppliers without connected purchases. When uploading your Purchases data, you have four columns which you can use to identify the supplier associated with the purchase:
Supplier Name - the legal name of the supplier company
VAT/Tax Number - the tax identifier of the supplier, if applicable
Registration Number - the company registration number of the supplier, if applicable
Country - the country of registration of the supplier
In order for a supplier to be recognised and displayed in the platform, it needs to have at least Supplier Name and Country information.
Merging Suppliers
In some cases, you may want to combine suppliers from your Purchases data into a single supplier. Common reasons for this include typos or name variations in the raw data, and multiple legal entities (subsidiaries) belonging to an organisation. Since the GHG Protocol requires organisation to report for their subsidiaries as well, its best practice to follow this structure for analysis and data exchange.
If you have identified two or more suppliers that should be combined into a single supplier, click the checkbox next to their name on the Suppliers screen. After selecting the suppliers, a bar will appear allowing you to start the merging process.
When merging the suppliers, you will be prompted to give the new combined entity a name, and attach an email address to it if you are not yet connected to that supplier on the Altruistiq platform. This email address will be used for sending data requests, but no email is sent at this point.
After clicking "Merge Selected", the two suppliers will be combined into one, and you can start sending data requests to the supplier.
Detaching an entity from a supplier
If you have made a mistake and accidentally merged two suppliers that should be treated as separate organisations, you can detach them from the supplier. Navigate to the profile page of the supplier, and click on the Company Information tab.
Select the entity that you want to detach, and click on the pips menu in the right hand side of the table. In the menu, click Detach entity.
If the supplier had outstanding data requests, those will stay connected to the original merged entity.
