In Ply, an email address is required to create a vendor. However, this doesn't mean the vendor needs to actually use email or receive purchase orders. This article explains how to add a vendor even if they don't have a real email address and how Ply behaves in that scenario, plus a few things to watch out for.
➡️ Why Ply requires an email
The email field is mandatory because it's used for sending purchase orders. Even if you don't plan to email POs, the system still requires a value in that field to create the vendor. The good news: the email does not have to be a real, monitored inbox.
➡️How to add a vendor if they don’t have an email
If your vendor doesn’t have an email address, you can still create them by using a placeholder email.
Step-by-step
Go to Suppliers in Ply
Click Add Supplier
Enter the vendor name and any other details you want to track
In the email field, enter a placeholder email, for example:
Save the vendor. The vendor will be created successfully.
➡️ Can you update the email later?
Yes. You can edit the vendor at any time and replace the placeholder with a real email address if you decide to start emailing POs from Ply.
➡️ Common use cases:
Vendors only accept orders by phone or in person
Orders are placed through a vendor portal
You're still setting up your account and don't have full vendor details yet
Ply is being used for inventory and purchasing tracking only
Online vendors like Amazon, Home Depot, or Grainger that don't accept emailed POs, see How to Add Online Vendors (Like Amazon) in Ply for the full workflow, including how to log those purchases with a PO for record-keeping.
Using a placeholder email lets you keep your vendors, materials, and purchasing workflows organized in Ply, even when email isn’t part of the process.
➡️ Best practices
✅ Make each placeholder email unique per vendor.
Don't reuse the exact same placeholder (e.g., [email protected] copy-pasted) across multiple different vendors. Some downstream systems and integrations treat the vendor's email as a unique identifier; reusing one across vendors can cause them to be merged or mismatched later.
✅ Keep it identifiable.
Basing the placeholder on the vendor's actual name ([email protected] rather than a generic one) makes it much easier to spot at a glance which record belongs to which vendor if you ever need to audit your supplier list.
✅ Still fill in a real contact name and phone number if you have one.
Even without an email. That way your team has a way to reach the vendor even though Ply itself won't be emailing them.
✅ Swap in the real email as soon as you get one.
If a vendor later sets up email ordering, update the record rather than creating a brand-new vendor; this keeps your pricing and purchase history tied to the same vendor.
➡️ Common issues & fixes
"Can I use the same placeholder email for more than one vendor to keep things simple?"
We'd recommend against it. In a real case we worked on, duplicate/reused vendor emails caused the vendor sync to ServiceTitan to create one vendor record per email address. Since multiple Ply vendors shared the same placeholder, this generated duplicate vendor records in ServiceTitan, which then broke the customer's export from ServiceTitan into their accounting system. If you're integrated with an FSM or accounting platform, always use a distinct placeholder per vendor to avoid this.
"I already have duplicate vendors from reused placeholder emails, can this be cleaned up?"
Yes. Reach out to our support team with a list of which vendor record should be kept for each duplicate pair (a simple source-of-truth list works fine). We can coordinate with our data team to deduplicate on our end.
"I added a vendor with a placeholder email, and now I'm not sure if a PO will actually get 'sent' anywhere."
It won't cause an error, but a PO created for a vendor with a placeholder email will simply have nowhere real to go if you use the "email PO" action, the email will attempt to send to the placeholder address, which isn't monitored by anyone. Use POs on this type of vendor for internal tracking only (see How to Add Online Vendors (Like Amazon) in Ply for this exact pattern).
FAQ
Does the placeholder email need to follow a specific format?
No, any validly formatted email address works ([email protected]). It just needs to look like a real email address to pass validation; it doesn't need to be reachable.
Will Ply try to actually send anything to the placeholder email?
If you email a PO to that vendor, Ply will attempt delivery to whatever address is on file, including a placeholder. Since it's not a real inbox, nothing will come back, but no error will show on your end either. This is expected and harmless.
Can I bulk-add several vendors with placeholder emails at once?
Yes, if you already have a list of vendor names, our data team can help load them in bulk rather than creating each one manually. See Adding Suppliers for more on bulk vendor uploads.
Still need help? Contact Support!