Managing Your Suppliers

The Suppliers section is where you manage your vendor relationships. As a Ferguson customer, Ferguson will appear here as your primary supplier.

From Suppliers tab:

You can:

✅ Add every regular contact for a supplier up front, not just one.

You can attach multiple contacts to the same supplier and choose who receives each PO at send time, this avoids creating duplicate supplier entries (e.g., "Ferguson - Sales" vs. "Ferguson - AP") just to route to different people. See Purchase Orders: add multiple vendor contacts for PO Emails.

✅ Keep supplier names consistent — avoid near-duplicate entries.

Duplicate or near-duplicate suppliers (slightly different names for the same vendor) split your pricing history and make Smart Supplier comparisons less reliable

✅ If a vendor doesn't use email, don't skip adding them — use a placeholder.

A real, monitored inbox isn't required to create a supplier. Just make sure each placeholder is unique per vendor rather than reused across several — reused placeholders have caused duplicate vendor records downstream in FSM integrations in real cases. See How to Add a Vendor in Ply Without an Email Address.

✅ When selecting Ferguson as a supplier anywhere in Ply, double-check whether you need "Ferguson" or "Ferguson Integrated."

Only "Ferguson Integrated" routes an order through Ferguson's Trilogie system — plain "Ferguson" sends it as a regular email instead. This distinction matters most on POs, but it's worth knowing at the supplier level too.

"A supplier contact says they never got our PO confirmation, but it shows as confirmed on our end."

Before assuming it's a delivery issue, check whether the PO was actually opened by a person. The "Confirm" link on a PO email doesn't require login, so an automatic email security scanner on the supplier's side (some corporate email systems scan and open links in incoming mail) can trigger a confirmation without anyone actually reviewing it. If this happens repeatedly with one supplier, it's worth having them check with their IT team about excluding that link from automatic scanning.

"I want to route different POs to different people at the same supplier."

Use multiple contacts on the same supplier record rather than creating separate supplier entries, see the best practice above. Selection isn't saved as a default, so you choose recipients fresh each time you send a PO.

"I need to add a supplier that doesn't use email at all."

That's fine, use a placeholder email to create the supplier record. See How to Add a Vendor in Ply Without an Email Address for the recommended format and why each one should be unique.

"I removed a supplier and now a material lost its pricing/sourcing option."

Removing a supplier doesn't delete your materials, but it does remove that supplier as a pricing option on anything it was attached to. Double-check you're not relying on that supplier as a Preferred or Smart Supplier before removing it.

Can I have more than one contact per supplier?

Yes, add as many as needed via the three-dot menu, and choose which one(s) receive each PO when you send it.

Does changing my Ferguson store affect existing POs?

No, it affects pricing and availability going forward, not POs already sent.

Can I bulk-add brand-new suppliers?

Yes, click Bulk upload next to Add Supplier on the Suppliers tab. Upload an Excel file (.xlsx or .xls, up to 10 MB) with a first sheet named "Suppliers," one supplier per row. Business Email, Business Name, and Contact Name are required; Phone, City, and Note are optional. A template is available directly from the upload screen to help structure your file.