Suppliers

Vendors who can't surprise you anymore.

A vendor directory built for QMS work. Audits, NCRs, and corrective actions land on the right profile automatically — so the next quarterly review answers itself.

app.qformance.io / suppliers / Acme Forge Ltd
ActiveMaterialsCreated 14 Jan 2025 · Updated 28 Apr 2026

Acme Forge Ltd · steel forgings & brackets

Facilities · 3 ASL visible to QA only
FacilityNumberASLStatusRisk
BirminghamSUP-014ASL-114ActiveLow
ToledoSUP-007ASL-114ActiveMedium
AugsburgSUP-002PendingMedium
One vendor, one profile — and a clean record per site they show up at.Risk is set per facility by QA — Low / Medium / High.
One profile, every site

One vendor. One profile. A clean record per site.

A supplier is one record in your system — name, category, contact info — with a separate working history at every facility you do business with them at. The history reflects the relationship as it really is: when did Birmingham start using them, when did Toledo come on board, what's happened at each site since.

Acme Forge Ltd · facility memberships
Birmingham
SUP-014
Counter local to this site
Toledo
SUP-007
Counter local to this site
Augsburg
SUP-002
Counter local to this site
The vendor's basic details are shared everywhere. The history at each site stays local to the site.
Your categories, your naming

The categories your team thinks in.

A starter set of categories ships with every new org — Materials, Services, Calibration, Subcontract — but they're a list, not a fixed taxonomy. Rename them, reorder them, add the ones your industry uses, drop the ones you don't. The naming convention for the directory is yours to set, too.

Admin → Suppliers
Categories · drag to reorder
1Materials50 suppliers
2Services43 suppliers
3Calibration36 suppliers
4Subcontract29 suppliers
5IT & Software22 suppliers
6Consumables15 suppliers
Naming
SUP
Pick the convention your team uses
Total active
184
Across 4 facilities

Your ASL stays with QA.

Maintaining the approved-supplier list is usually a small QA-team job. Finding a vendor's contact info is everyone's. Both work — without two systems and without anyone seeing what they shouldn't.

Right people only

One directory. Two cleanly different views.

For the QA team, the approved-supplier number sits alongside every vendor — searchable, editable, theirs to manage. For everyone else, it's not even there. Same directory, the same vendors, but a view that matches what each person actually needs to do.

Same supplier · two roles
Quality Manager
NumberSUP-014
ASLASL-114
StatusActive
RiskLow
Production Lead
NumberSUP-014
ASL(Hidden)
StatusActive
RiskLow
Set who owns it once — works across every vendor in the directory.
Statuses that match real life

Active, Pending, Inactive, Blocked.

Four labels that describe where each vendor sits with you. Pending is for vendors under qualification; Active is the in-use relationship; Inactive holds vendors you've moved away from; Blocked flags vendors you've disqualified. All four stay searchable — the directory is the kind of record an auditor expects to see, never deleted, just retired.

Supplier status lifecycle
PendingUnder qualification.
ActiveApproved and currently used.
InactiveNo longer used; kept for history.
Branch:
Active
BlockedDisqualified — kept on file for the audit trail.
What they supply

Down to the individual BOM line.

A supplier links to the products they serve, and a product carries every supplier approved for it — the relationship is many-to-many in both directions, because real parts are multi-sourced and real vendors serve more than one part.

It goes a level finer than that. An individual bill-of-materials line carries its own approved vendors, so a spring sourced from two suppliers inside an assembly reads exactly that way — rather than collapsing into a single supplier for the whole build.

Which makes the hard question answerable in the other direction too: when this vendor slips, what does it reach? Everything above them in the assemblies they feed.

Their paperwork lives here as well. A vendor’s certification, or the quality clauses you issue to them, can be registered as a controlled document tied to that supplier — approved, versioned and searchable like any other, and listed on a Documents tab on their profile.

Acme Forge · supplies
PRD-118Hydraulic manifold assemblyassembly
PRD-118-2Spool valve sub-assembly
PRD-118-2-2Return springprimary
PRD-0912Seal kitsecondary
Approved on individual bill-of-materials lines, not just whole products.
Cross-module rollup

Every NCR, every audit — already attached.

Nine modules can name a supplier: NCR, Audit, MOC, Exemption, FMEA, Risk, Meeting, JHA, and controlled Documents. The link is bidirectional — the supplier profile shows the record, the record shows the supplier. Procurement asks “how often have we raised against this vendor?” and you answer in one click, not a spreadsheet.

Actions roll up differently, on purpose. An action never attaches to a vendor directly — it belongs to the record that raised it. So the corrective actions on a supplier’s profile are the ones hanging off their NCRs and audits, which is what keeps “open actions against this supplier” honest instead of a second list somebody has to maintain.

Acme Forge · linked records
NCR-2026-0418NCR · MajorHardness 8 HRC below spec on lot LH-210422 Apr · Toledo
AUD-2026-014Supplier auditAnnual surveillance audit · 4 minor findings14 Apr · Birmingham
NCR-2026-0382NCR · MinorLate delivery against PO-44218 · Customer impact08 Apr · Toledo
ACT-2026-0182Action · via NCR-0418Re-qualify hardness testing at goods-inOpen · Toledo
SOP-QA-11DocumentSupplier quality requirements · issued to vendorRev D · current
MOC-0098MOCRecurrence-prevention process changeClosed · Toledo
Filter by facility, status, or module — same set of records, queried from the supplier's side.

The vendor record an auditor expects to see.

Linkable, filterable, scoped, permission-aware. Boring foundations that turn vendor records into evidence.

Supplier audit type, picker required

Picking the Supplier audit type makes the supplier picker required, so the audit's vendor is captured at creation rather than tagged on later.

NCRs attached to vendors

An NCR can be attached to a supplier from the create form's optional Supplier picker. Once attached, the NCR shows up on the supplier's profile rollup — one click from procurement's question to the answer.

The right people, every time

Decide once who owns vendor records, who maintains the ASL, and who handles facility relationships. The directory keeps the lines clean throughout.

Make every vendor a record, not a row in a spreadsheet.

Every part they supply, every NCR they caused, every audit you ran on them — one profile, one click.