Stockroom builds your supplier list for you and keeps it tidy. This guide covers where suppliers come from, the details worth adding, the rules that put each product on the right purchase order, and importing or exporting by CSV.
Where your suppliers come from
Supplier names are added automatically from your Shopify products' vendor names - or you can create your own Supplier right in Stockroom!
The list has three tabs - Active, Hidden, and All - and you can search by name, company, or email.
Add details to a supplier
Open any supplier to fill in the details that make ordering smoother. Only Name is required; everything else is optional:
Details: Company name, Account number, Contact name, Email, Phone, Currency, Lead time (days), Payment terms, Free freight over, Minimum order value.
Type - group suppliers your own way, like "Product", "Office supplies", or "Dropship". Pick an existing type or choose New type… to name a new one. Once any supplier has a type, the Suppliers list gains a Type column and a type filter.
Address and Notes.
Ships direct to customers - tick this when the supplier dropships their items to your customers. With Automation on in Settings, new orders for their items create purchase orders automatically - see Create dropship purchase orders automatically. This is about where the goods go; what their orders do to your stock is the next field.
Stock handling - what purchase orders to this supplier do to your Shopify inventory. Leave it on your store default, or choose Do not update my stock for a dropshipper you never receive into stock, and their orders stop pushing incoming units. Any single order can still override it while it is a draft - see Dropship purchase orders: ship straight to your customer.
Adding an Email now means you can send that supplier a PO with one click later. Account number is the number this supplier files you under, and it prints on every PO you send them - on the PDF and in the email - so their team can match the order to your account. Setting a Currency fills in the currency on their POs automatically, and Lead time (days) helps Stockroom time your reorders. Once a supplier has received orders in Stockroom, a hint under the field shows their actual average ("Deliveries averaged N days") - click the number to use it. The Suppliers list shows the same observed average as a subdued "~N days" wherever no lead time is set.
To create a supplier from scratch, click Add supplier - a name is all you need (it has to be unique). Save changes with Save in the bar at the top.
Free freight and minimum orders
Free freight over and Minimum order value are the two numbers you weigh up when deciding whether an order is worth placing yet. Fill in either one and every purchase order for that supplier shows where it stands, right under the subtotal: "Spend $142.00 more to reach free freight ($500.00)", turning into Qualifies for free freight once you get there.
Neither is ever enforced. An order under the minimum still saves, still sends, and still receives - the numbers are there to tell you, not to stop you. Both are read in the supplier's own currency, so a purchase order raised in a different currency skips the comparison rather than converting it into a figure nobody quoted.
Hide suppliers you no longer use
Nothing is ever deleted. On a supplier's page, click Hide supplier to remove them from purchase-order pickers. Their history is kept and you can Unhide supplier anytime. Hidden suppliers still show on the Hidden and All tabs, and hiding also drops their items from reorder suggestions - hidden means you do not order from them. Pruning a long list after a migration? Tick suppliers on the list and use Hide suppliers or Unhide suppliers in the bulk bar.
Merge duplicate suppliers
If the automatic import left you with more than one entry for the same real-world supplier - a distributor plus each of the brands you buy through them, or a few spellings of one name - you can fold them into one. Tick the duplicates on the Suppliers list and click Merge in the bulk bar, then choose the supplier to keep. Purchase orders, item links, pack recipes and auto-assign rules from the others all move to the one you keep, and the duplicates are hidden - nothing is deleted.
The merged names keep working: each one is added to the surviving supplier's Vendors rule, so products carrying that vendor name still land on the right purchase order - and the automatic import will not re-create the entry you merged away.
Renaming behaves the same way. Rename a supplier that came from a vendor name - say, to the distributor's real name - and the old vendor name is added to their Vendors rule automatically, so their products stay assigned and the old entry does not come back on its own.
One exception: a supplier connected on Stockroom Network cannot be merged into another - disconnect them first, or pick them as the supplier to keep.
Auto-assign products to suppliers
When you build a purchase order, Stockroom works out which supplier each product belongs to. You can steer this from the Auto-assign products section on each supplier:
Vendors - the Shopify vendor names this supplier covers. Useful when you buy several brands through one distributor.
Product tags - any product carrying one of these tags is matched to this supplier.
Separate multiple values with commas. Stockroom matches in this order: a Vendors rule first, then a Product tags rule, then a supplier whose name exactly matches the product's vendor, and finally it creates a new supplier from the vendor name if nothing else matches. Matching ignores capitalization.
Tip: if you map a vendor name to a distributor with a Vendors rule, Stockroom will not also create a separate supplier for that vendor name.
Import and export by CSV
From the Suppliers list, use Export CSV to download your current view (it respects the active tab and search) and Import CSV to bulk-add or update.
Exported files re-import as-is.
New names are added; existing suppliers are matched by name and updated.
Blank cells never overwrite existing values. To empty a field in bulk, put the word clear in the cell - it works on any column except the name, and on the rule and recipients lists it empties the whole list.
The assigned_vendors and assigned_tags columns hold your auto-assign rules.
The type column holds the supplier's type - handy for setting types in bulk.
Several addresses in the email cell, separated by ; or , are fine: the first becomes the supplier's email and the rest are copied on every purchase order sent to them.
The recipients column (last in the file) holds that copied-on-every-PO list. A filled cell replaces the saved list; a blank one leaves it alone.
Good to know
Supplier names must be unique. Trying to add a name that already exists (including a hidden supplier's) will not save.
The list refreshes vendor names about once a minute, so opening the page repeatedly is fine.
If a supplier bills a box or an assorted pack under a single code, the Pack recipes section on their page teaches Stockroom what that code contains, so CSV imports expand it into the right product lines - see Pack recipes: turn one supplier code into several products.
Use the columns button above the list to choose which columns show - the choice is remembered on this browser.