Vendor Overview

Vendors are your suppliers—the companies you purchase ingredients from. Managing vendors in PrepStation lets you track costs, compare prices, and streamline ordering.

Why Vendors Matter

Vendors → Vendor Items → Ingredients → Recipes → Costs

Everything starts with what you pay for ingredients. Accurate vendor information means accurate recipe costs.

What You Can Track

Vendor Information

Vendor Items (Products)

Each product a vendor sells is a "vendor item":

The Vendor-Ingredient Connection

One ingredient can come from multiple vendors:

All Purpose Flour (Ingredient)
    ├── Sysco - 50lb bag @ $24.99
    ├── US Foods - 25lb bag @ $13.50
    └── Restaurant Depot - 50lb bag @ $22.99

You set one as the preferred vendor—that's the price used in recipe calculations.

Key Concepts

Preferred Vendor

Each ingredient has one preferred vendor. This vendor's price is used for:

• Recipe cost calculations
• Menu pricing
• Cost reports

Change the preferred vendor to instantly update all recipe costs.

Vendor Items vs Ingredients

Active vs Inactive Vendors

• Active — Currently ordering from this vendor
• Inactive — No longer using, but history preserved

Inactive vendors don't appear in dropdowns but their historical data remains.

Vendor Cards

Vendors are displayed in a card format showing key information at a glance:

Navigate vendor details:

Common Workflows

Vendors in the Data Flow

┌─────────────┐
│   VENDORS   │  ← You add supplier information
└──────┬──────┘
       │
       ▼
┌─────────────┐
│VENDOR ITEMS │  ← Link products with prices
└──────┬──────┘
       │
       ▼
┌─────────────┐
│ INGREDIENTS │  ← Get cost from preferred vendor
└──────┬──────┘
       │
       ▼
┌─────────────┐
│   RECIPES   │  ← Costs calculate automatically
└─────────────┘

See the supply chain on your dashboard:

Next Steps

• Adding Vendors — Create your first vendor
• Vendor Items — Link products to ingredients
• Preferred Vendors — Set default pricing