Restaurant Vendor Management and Catalog Setup

Every restaurant has the supplier who calls the day before, and the one who appears at the back door at 7:40 with half the order and a different brand of flour. The friction rarely comes from the people. It comes from data: a phone number that changed, a pack size nobody wrote down, a price that crept up over three deliveries before anyone looked.

This guide explains how vendor records work in Wox, how to clean up the vendors that arrive from rs.ge, how to define items, units, and pack sizes, and how to keep an eye on prices. For the product overview, see vendor management. For the wider supplier relationship, the journal piece on restaurant vendor management is a good companion.

Where vendor records come from

Vendors reach Wox by three routes. You can add one by hand. If you connect rs.ge, Wox reads twelve months of waybill history and then syncs nightly, creating a vendor for each seller it finds, with the seller's tax ID. And when you import a scanned invoice, Wox can create the vendor named on it.

Vendors created automatically are marked unverified until someone reviews them. That is deliberate. rs.ge knows a supplier's legal name, not the name your kitchen uses, and the same company can appear twice if it trades under two entities or someone added it by hand before you connected.

Who owns vendor data

• Purchasing lead: owns vendor contacts, order windows, and who to call when a delivery goes wrong.
• Operations manager: enforces item naming and category standards across every location.
• Receiving team: reports substitutions and price mismatches on the day they happen.

Review the vendors rs.ge creates

1. 1Open the rs.ge screen in Wox and go to the Vendors tab.
2. 2Check each vendor's name and tax ID against the supplier you actually work with.
3. 3Merge duplicates into one record so their history and prices stay together.
4. 4When you merge, keep the record your team already knows, so history stays under the name people recognise at the back door.

By default, waybills wait for your review before anything reaches stock. Once a supplier's waybills arrive clean month after month, you can let that vendor's waybills import automatically and keep review for the rest. The full rs.ge flow is described on the rs.ge integration page.

Complete each vendor profile

A vendor record in Wox holds more than a phone number. It carries the contact's phone and email, the channel they prefer, the address, delivery days, the order cutoff time, lead time, minimum order, payment terms, and free notes. Each of those fields answers a question someone would otherwise ask the owner.

1. 1Complete each vendor profile with the main contact's phone and email and the channel they prefer.
2. 2Add a backup contact name and number in the notes, for the morning the sales rep does not pick up.
3. 3Record delivery days, the order cutoff time, lead time in days, and the minimum order.
4. 4Add payment terms and any receiving constraints, such as deliveries only before 11:00 through the side entrance.

Normalize items, units, and pack sizes

This is the slow part, and the one that pays back most. Stock is counted in units, but vendors sell in packs. One supplier sells sunflower oil as a case of twelve 1 L bottles, another as a 5 L can. If those are not defined, a count of 40 litres and a delivery of 3 cases cannot be reconciled without a calculator and a guess.

1. 1Normalize item names, units, and categories using the organization's naming standard.
2. 2Set the unit each item is counted in, such as kilograms, litres, or pieces.
3. 3For each vendor item, record the pack size, the minimum order quantity, and the order increment.
4. 4Note whether the vendor's prices include 18% VAT, so cost reports compare like with like.

Link items to vendors and plan substitutes

An item can be linked to more than one vendor. That matters on the day your usual sulguni supplier is short: the second source is already set up, with its own pack size and price, and nobody has to create anything in a hurry.

1. 1Link each item to every vendor that supplies it, starting with your preferred source.
2. 2Record acceptable substitutes for key items in the vendor notes, such as another brand of flour of the same grade.
3. 3Tell the receiving team which substitutions they may accept without calling a manager.

Watch prices every week

Vendor prices in Wox are kept as a history with effective dates, so a new price never overwrites the old one. Imported invoices add the prices you actually paid, and rs.ge waybills keep a priced record of every delivery. That history is what lets you see a slow drift before it shows up in the month's food cost.

1. 1Each week, review prices for your top-moving items, usually meat, dairy, oil, and flour.
2. 2Compare the latest price paid with the previous one and with your second vendor for the same item.
3. 3Log approved price changes and flag unexplained increases to the purchasing lead.

Wox Analyst can shorten this. Ask which supplier prices rose most this month and it answers from your live data, including rs.ge, in Georgian or English. If a dish's margin has slipped, it can propose a new price, which changes only after you confirm. The price variance guide covers the reporting side.

Most vendor problems are data problems that arrive by truck.

Some suppliers keep their own catalog and prices up to date through the Wox vendor portal. If yours do, the vendor portal guide explains what they see and maintain on their side.

What good looks like

• The team builds orders quickly because item details are accurate.
• Vendors receive clear requests and make fewer follow-up calls.
• Price changes are visible early, so margin decisions are made before the month closes.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Duplicate items in the catalog. They split the price history and confuse counts. Search for duplicates once a month, merge what is the same, and archive what is no longer bought.

Outdated vendor contacts. Sales reps change more often than suppliers do. Check contacts during the same monthly review.

Price changes nobody owns. If everyone is responsible for watching prices, no one is. Assign one person to the weekly price review.