Vendors

Vendors are an important part of materials management processing. In order to issue an RFQ, a purchase order or a payment to a vendor, that vendor first must reside in the NCAS vendor file. There are two types of vendors in the NCAS vendor file: trade vendors and non-trade vendors.

Trade vendors are defined as people or companies, outside the agency, who provide goods and services to your agency. Trade vendors are vendors from whom an invoice is expected. In the NCAS, all agencies share the trade vendors which are established in the Statewide Trade Vendor File. The Statewide Trade Vendor File is a master file that contains essential information about all trade vendors (e.g., addresses, phone numbers, and vendor numbers). RFQs and purchase orders should be issued only to trade vendors, while payments may be made to both trade and non-trade vendors.

Non-trade vendors are defined as people or companies to whom your agency makes payments, but those payments are not in return for purchased goods or services. One example of a non-trade vendor is the agency's employees. These employee vendors are issued payments such as travel advances, reimbursements for travel and miscellaneous expenses. Other non-trade vendors might be scholarship recipients, welfare recipients, etc. Unlike trade vendors, non-trade vendors are unique to each agency, and so are not part of a common file.

In order to facilitate vendor reporting, all trade vendors are assigned to one or more vendor categories. These categories are assigned via three-digit codes in the five Category Codes fields on screen VGN. For consistency in reporting across Paying Entities, agencies are encouraged to category code their non-trade vendors with the codes that are applied to trade vendors.

The VPN screen is used for establishing vendor 1099 information. If a default value is entered in the 1099 Code field on screen VPN, that value will default on all of that vendors invoices. If the Tax ID Number field is left blank, or if the Tax ID Expiration Date is prior to the current date, then taxes will be withheld on 1099 transactions with this vendor.

Every NCAS transaction with a vendor must reference that vendors number. The NCAS vendor number is the company's federal employer ID number or, in the case of an individual, the social security number. In order to find the appropriate number, you can use the Vendor Short Name Lookup (VSL) screen. You can do an alphabetic search for the vendor using the vendor short name.

On the VSA screen, you can add a trade vendor to the NCAS within a temporary paying entity called VADD, which simply means vendor add. You can also make a change to a vendor using the VSA screen. The paying entity, CHGE is used when requesting a vendor change. The OSC then takes the information received from the VSA screen and establishes the vendor within a permanent paying entity called VEND. Once a vendor is established within VEND, it is removed from VADD. The OSC generally takes less than one working day to add or change a vendor in the Statewide Trade Vendor File. Once vendors are established within the VEND paying entity, they are available to agencies statewide through each agency's trade paying entity (XXPT).

Vendors

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