How to Use Supplier and Customer Rules

Supplier and Customer Rules establish routine behaviours that take effect whenever documents from specific suppliers or customers are uploaded to Dext Prepare.

Once you’ve set a supplier or customer rule, it will be applied every time a new transaction from that supplier or customer is uploaded to Dext Prepare.

When a Supplier rule is changed, it will also be applied to every existing transaction from that supplier in the Inbox.

However, if customer rule is changed, the updated rule will not be applied to the inbox items, as it has been set after the items were submitted.


What do Supplier & Customer Rules do?

It is common that a business will purchase the same type of goods or services from a single supplier or customer, for example:

  • Uber receipts are always categorized as a travel expense
  • Adobe, Google, Apple, and Microsoft receipts are always categorized as IT costs
  • Gas and Electricity bills are always categorized under utility costs

Rules automate this behavior so that you don’t need to review predictable paperwork from repeat suppliers or customers.

You can use Supplier Rules or Customer Rules to assign a default:

  • Category
  • Invoice due date
  • Tax rate
  • Payment Method
  • Paid/Unpaid status
  • Description
  • Currency

Note: You may be able to set rules for more fields if your account is integrated with accounting software. Please note that the following integrations QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage 50 support the ability to have suppliers in multiple currencies, e.g CAD and USD.


How to Set a Rule

To set a rule:

  1. Navigate to the Item Details page for a document from the supplier or customer.
  2. Click Set supplier rules or Set customer rules based on relevance.
  1. Fill in details for each field that you’d like to automate.
  1. When ready, click Apply.

Alternatively go to Lists in the sidebar, then Suppliers or Customers.

From here you can view your suppliers or customers, then set and manage Supplier or Customer rules for each of them.

  1. Click on the Supplier or Customer’s name to enter the supplier’s page.
  2. Add or change any rules using the editable fields.

Supplier Rules can also be set when uploading your supplier list. Click here for more information.

Please note: You may need to reload the Customer list before you can apply rules on the Customer List page. To do so, click Reload List.


How to set Supplier rules in bulk

You can save time and set your supplier rules in bulk from the Supplier list.

  1. Go to the Suppliers list in the sidebar.
  2. Tick the checkbox next to the suppliers you want to edit rules for, click the Bulk Edit button in the top left corner of the page.
  1. Select the supplier rules you would like to set for each of the suppliers, then click Apply.