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How to set up your suppliers and order from each one

10 min read

The Suppliers page groups your products by who you buy them from. For each supplier, it adds up the stock you hold and the cash tied up in it, and it lists what’s about to run out, ready to copy into an order or to open in your own email app.

You will learn #

  • How to add your suppliers, with their delivery times and minimum orders
  • How to give your products a supplier, one at a time or many at once
  • What the Exposure by supplier table tells you
  • How to copy or email a supplier the list of what to reorder

Before you begin #

  • The figures come from your last analysis. The stock value, the cash tied up and the run-out dates on the Suppliers page come from the analysis Tendlio runs every week, or from the one you start with Re-scan store on the To do page. The supplier itself is the exception: when you give a product a supplier, the page shows it under that supplier right away. A product you’ve added since your last analysis shows up there only after the next analysis.
  • To import suppliers from a file, you need permission to edit products. Without it, the import section says that only someone who can edit products can use it.

Open the Suppliers page #

  1. In your WordPress admin, open Tendlio → Inventory.
  2. Click Suppliers. It’s the last of the Inventory pages.

Until at least one of your products has a supplier, the Your next step box at the top of the page says Add your suppliers, then assign them to products. Its Add a supplier button takes you to the table where you add your suppliers.

Add your suppliers #

  1. Under Your suppliers, type the supplier’s name in the last row, the empty one that says Add a supplier…
  2. Fill in the details you know. All three are optional:
    • Lead time (days): how long this supplier takes to deliver after you order. If their delivery times vary, enter the longest wait you can expect, not the shortest. If you leave it empty, Tendlio uses your Default lead time under Settings → General → Inventory, which is 14 days unless you’ve changed it.
    • Order email: the address your orders to this supplier go to. With it, the list of what to reorder from this supplier, further down the Suppliers page, gets an Email order button.
    • Minimum order: the smallest order this supplier accepts, at your cost prices. Tendlio uses it on the Restock page, where this supplier’s group in your restock list adds up your order and, when it falls short of the minimum, says by how much. Leave it empty if they have none.
  3. Click Save suppliers.

Suppliers you’ve already set on products show up in this table on their own, so for them you only fill in the details. You can come back and change the details at any time.

Give your products a supplier #

The supplier is who you order a product from. It’s separate from the product’s brand, which your store can show to shoppers. You can set it on each product, or on many products at once with a CSV file.

On one product: open the product in WooCommerce (Products → All Products), and at the bottom of its General tab find the section headed Tendlio. Start typing in Supplier and pick one of your suppliers, or type a new name, then click Update. A new name you type there also shows up under Your suppliers.

On many products at once:

  1. Make a CSV file with a header row and two columns, sku and supplier, and one row per product. For a product with variations, the SKU of any of its variations works, and the supplier goes on the product itself.
  2. To set your suppliers’ minimum orders in the same file, add a third column, min_order. Fill it in on one row for each supplier, and leave it empty on the others. An empty cell never clears a minimum you’ve already set.
  3. At the bottom of the Suppliers page, under Bulk import suppliers (CSV), choose the file and click Import suppliers.
  4. Read the message that appears. It says how many products got a supplier and how many SKUs in your file matched no product, and it lists the first few of those SKUs.

A few more rules for the file:

  • Importing a file again replaces the supplier on each product in it.
  • To take the supplier off a product, write - or none in its supplier cell. An empty supplier cell leaves that product as it is.
  • If two rows give the same supplier different minimums, Tendlio keeps the first one and tells you how many rows disagreed.
  • The headers can also be sifra or šifra instead of sku, and dobavljac, vendor or proizvodjac instead of supplier.
  • The file has to be a .csv of up to 5 MB.

To see how far you’ve got, check the line near the top of the page, under the Your next step box, for example “2 of 6,001 products have a supplier assigned.”

See what sits with each supplier #

Once a product has a supplier, Exposure by supplier lists your suppliers, starting with the one whose stock is worth the most:

  • Products: how many of your products you buy from this supplier.
  • Stock value: what that stock is worth at cost. It counts only the products whose stock WooCommerce counts and that have a cost price, one you entered or one worked out from your average margin, so it can cover fewer products than Products.
  • Tied up: the cash in this supplier’s stock that you won’t sell soon. That’s all the stock of a product that hasn’t sold in a year or more (two years for a seasonal product, or on a Luxury & High-Ticket store), plus the part of a product’s stock that goes far beyond what it sells. It’s the same money as the Tied up column on Products & insights and your Dead Stock score, added up for each supplier. It’s also the money to bring up with that supplier: ask for a return or a rebate, or order less for a while.
  • Restock now: how many of this supplier’s products will run out before the supplier could deliver a new order.
  • Revenue / mo: what this supplier’s products bring in during a month, at the pace they sell while in stock and at the prices your last analysis saw.

The table shows up to 200 suppliers, the ones whose stock is worth the most.

Reorder from a supplier #

When products from a supplier will run out within the next 30 days, Restock by supplier appears under Exposure by supplier, with one group for each supplier. You can change those 30 days with the Stockout warning setting, described below. The Your next step box at the top of the page counts the products, for example 1 product needs restocking soon, and its Go to restock lists button takes you to the groups.

Each group is a table of products, with their SKU, In stock, Runs out in and Order ≈:

  • Runs out in is colored by the supplier’s lead time. It’s red when the product runs out before the supplier could deliver, orange when it runs out before twice the lead time, and yellow when it lasts longer than that.
  • Order ≈ is how many the product is expected to sell in the next 30 days, rounded up.

To place the order:

  1. Find the group for the supplier you’re ordering from.
  2. Click Copy restock list. Tendlio copies a heading, for example “Restock: Acme”, and then one line for each product, with its SKU, its name and the quantity. Tabs separate the parts of each line, so they land in separate columns when you paste them into a spreadsheet.
  3. Paste the list into an email to your supplier, or into their order form.

If you’ve added the supplier’s Order email, you can click Email order instead. Your own email app opens a new message to the supplier, with “Restock: Acme” as the subject and the list in the body. You check it and send it from your own address, and it lands in your own sent folder. Tendlio never emails a supplier for you.

A link that opens your email app can hold only so much text, and past that the message can arrive cut short, or not open at all. When a supplier’s list is too long for it, the Email order button is replaced by a note that asks you to copy the list and paste it into an email to that supplier’s address. Copy restock list always holds every line.

When nothing from your suppliers needs restocking, the Your next step box says so. If products without a supplier need restocking, the box says that instead, and its Open Restock button takes you to the Restock page, where they are.

Which products the list includes #

The list under Restock by supplier holds products that still have stock and will run out within your Stockout warning, a setting under Settings → General → Inventory that shows in Advanced mode. It’s 30 days unless you’ve changed it. That’s a different window from Restock now in the Exposure by supplier table, which counts the products that run out before their supplier could deliver, so the two numbers can differ.

Two kinds of products aren’t on the list, because neither has a run-out date: products that have already sold out, and products whose stock WooCommerce doesn’t count. A sold-out product that was selling is at the top of the Restock page instead, and so is a product without a stock count once its stock status in WooCommerce is Out of stock.

If more than 1,000 products need restocking at once, the Your next step box says At least N products need restocking soon. The page reads at most 1,000 of them, in the alphabetical order of your suppliers, so suppliers near the end of the alphabet can be missing until fewer products are due.

Why the Suppliers page works this way #

The quantity is 30 days of sales #

Order ≈ is a quick answer: what the product should sell in the next 30 days. It doesn’t take off what’s already on your shelf, and it doesn’t round up to your supplier’s packs. For an order that covers several months, takes your stock off and rounds up to whole packs, use Your restock list on the Restock page. That list is grouped by supplier too, and it checks each supplier’s minimum order.

Each supplier gets its own lead time #

Ten days of stock is plenty from a supplier who delivers in three days, and too little from one who takes three weeks. That’s why each supplier has its own lead time. If you enter a lead time shorter than the supplier takes to deliver, Tendlio can mark a product as safe when an order placed today would already arrive too late.

The lead time colors Runs out in on the Suppliers page and on the Restock page, and it counts the products in Restock now. It also decides which best-sellers the To do card about ordering best-sellers lists (“Order N best-sellers within X days to stay in stock”), and it counts toward Restock Readiness in your Inventory Score. The colors and counts follow a new lead time as soon as you save it.

Your score follows only at the next analysis. Until then, your last analysis no longer matches your settings, so pages that work from it say “Some numbers on this page may be out of date”, and Auto outlet in Live waits for the new analysis before it changes any prices.

Additional resources #

Frequently asked questions #

Can Tendlio send the order to my supplier? #

No. Copy restock list puts the list on your clipboard, and Email order opens it in your own email app, addressed to the supplier. You send it yourself, from your own address.

Why isn't a sold-out product on my supplier's list? #

The list holds products that still have stock and will run out soon. A sold-out product that was selling is at the top of the Restock page, and your restock list there groups it under its supplier.

Why is the quantity here different from the Restock page? #

Here it's what the product should sell in the next 30 days. The Restock page works out an order for the months you choose, takes your stock off, and rounds up to whole packs.

Does the supplier show to shoppers? #

No. The supplier is who you order from, and it stays in your admin. The brand is the one your store can show to shoppers.

Updated on October 6, 2026