Vendor Preferences

The one setting that governs vendors, the custom fields you can add, and the defaults people expect to find here but will not.

There is less here than most people expect, and knowing what is missing saves a hunt through Settings.

The one setting

Duplicate display names are governed workspace-wide, and the switch is filed under Sales rather than Purchases: go to SettingsFinanceSalesCustomers.

Preference	What it does	Applies to
Allow duplicate customer/vendor names	Off by default, which refuses a second contact whose display name matches an existing one. Turn it on only if you genuinely trade with two businesses of the same name.	Customers and vendors together, immediately

What is not configurable

These are the defaults people look for on this page. None of them exists, and each is decided somewhere else instead.

Expected setting	What actually happens
Default payment terms for new vendors	One payment term is marked the workspace default and is offered everywhere. There is no vendor-specific default.
Default currency for new vendors	The form starts from your organisation's base currency. There is no separate vendor default.
Default expense account	Not a setting. When a bill line carries no account, Finance falls back to the Purchase Adjustments account, and to any active expense account if that is missing.
Vendor numbering	Vendors are not auto-numbered. Vendor ID is a free-text field in the shape VEND-XXXX that you fill in yourself.
Duplicate invoice number check	Not a preference, and stronger than one. A bill number must be unique per vendor, so a repeat is refused rather than warned about.

Custom fields

Finance Settings with Purchases selected in the left rail and tabs across the top for Vendors, Expenses, Purchase Orders, Purchase Receives, Bills, Vendor Payments and Vendor Credits. The Vendors tab shows Vendor Settings, a Custom Fields Usage counter reading 0 of 135, and an empty state offering an Add Custom Field button. — Every purchase module has its own tab here. The usage counter is shared across the workspace.

Add a field for anything SorviAI Finance does not model: an account manager, a contract end date, a supplier category for reporting. Lists beat free text, because a text field fills with three spellings of the same word within a month.