Vendor Number Change & Document Numbers

1 minute read time.

I’m sure you must have noticed that in sports, everyone on the same team is issued a different uniform number so that each player can be easily identified on the field. Conversely no two players on the same team can wear the same uniform number. Imagine how difficult it would be for you to distinguish a football player on the team if all the players has the same uniform, the same number? However players from different teams can use the same uniform number.

Document numbers such as invoice and check numbers are like uniform numbers issued out to players on the same team. Invoice and check number cannot be reused for the same vendor, but different vendors can have the same invoice and check numbers.

I received a support call from a customer the other day who was combining two vendors using Vendor Number Change. When they combined the vendors they received a message that a new document number has been generated to avoid duplication in the message log. They were concerned about why Vendor Number Change was changing their document numbers and how to determine which document numbers were changed.

I explained that when they are combining two vendors as one vendor, duplicate document number are changed because invoice numbers and check numbers must be unique for a vendor. It’s like getting another hockey player from a trade, but you have to issue him a new uniform number because someone on the team is currently using it.

Going back to the call, I explained that they can review which document numbers were change by going to the Transaction tab in A/P Vendor Activity. For example if you combining Vendor 1350 into vendor 1400 and both vendors had the same invoice number of "INV1", Vendor Number Change will edit the document number for vendor 1350 to "INV1(1)"

If you have any questions, please let us know. We would like to hear from you.