Settings holds your organisation-wide choices. Open it from Setup → "Settings". In the live service every panel here is for admins only (editors see "Only an admin can change this setting."), except areas, teams and document templates, which editors can change too. The "Run the setup guide" button at the top re-opens the seven-step guide.
Import suppliers from a spreadsheet
Download the template, fill in one row per supplier, save as CSV and upload it. Only "Supplier name" is required. Full details are in Importing suppliers. In short:
- Columns: Supplier name, Area, Sub-category, Tier, Stage, Owner, Contract start, Contract end, Notice days, Annual value, Currency.
- Tier is T1–T4 or Strategic, Key, Approved, Transactional; unknown tiers become T3. Stage defaults to Active. Owner must match a person's name.
- Dates are YYYY-MM-DD or DD/MM/YYYY. Notice days default to 90. An unknown currency uses your reporting currency. New areas are added automatically.
- Rows over your plan's supplier limit are skipped and you're told how many.
Organisation
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| "Organisation name (shown to suppliers in the portal)" | Appears on the portal, forms, letters and reports. |
| "Reporting currency" | GBP, USD, EUR, CHF, JPY, CAD, AUD, SGD, SEK, NOK, DKK or INR. Dashboard totals, charts and spend comparisons convert to this currency. Each contract, invoice and bid keeps its own currency. |
| "Start renewal reviews this many days before the earliest deadline" | Default 90, minimum 14. Applies to every contract unless a contract sets its own. See Contracts and renewals. |
| "Separation of duties" | Tick "A supplier's manager can't approve their own supplier to go live" if you want that rule. The rest are always on. See Approval limits and separation of duties. |
| "Who can release new bank details" | Optional. Tick the names of the people who may release payments after a change of bank details. When names are ticked, only they, or whoever is covering for them while they're away, can release. When none are ticked, any second person can release after the checks. See Bank details and fraud checks. |
| "Keep closed suppliers' records for (years)" | 1 to 25, default 6. After a supplier is closed, its records can't be deleted until this many years after the end of the financial year it closed in. See Retention and legal hold. |
| "Financial year starts" | The month your financial year starts. April unless you change it, or September if you've ticked "Academy trust". Used for the Payment practices report's half-years, spend this financial year (in the Related and connected parties report) and how long closed suppliers' records are kept. |
Branding (logo, brand colour and registered address) and the accounts payable email are set in the setup guide's first step and in Modules & forms.
What you need to evidence
"Turns on the records and reports your auditors and regulators expect." Tick whichever apply:
- "ISO 27001 certified or working towards it" (supplier controls A.5.19 to A.5.23)
- "Cyber Essentials, or customers check our supply chain"
- "Regulated by the FCA or PRA" (outsourcing register)
- "Academy trust" (related party transactions, DfE approval over £40,000, financial year to 31 August)
- "Charity" (connected parties)
- "Housing association"
These decide what appears inside each supplier's "Assurance and regulatory records" section. SupplierVault records the evidence; it doesn't give legal or regulatory advice.
Public sector: Procurement Act 2023
"For public bodies: councils, NHS bodies, academy trusts, universities, housing associations and others that are contracting authorities." Tick "We're a contracting authority under the Procurement Act 2023. Add the Act's notices, deadlines, KPIs and payment reporting to each supplier." Then set:
- Type of authority: Sub-central (councils, academy trusts, universities, housing associations and most others) or Central government (departments, NHS trusts and foundation trusts).
- Our unique identifier (PPON), used in the payment reports.
- We're a school and We're a Welsh contracting authority, if they apply. For Welsh authorities, copies of contracts over £5 million aren't published, below-threshold notices start at £30,000, and the Payments over £30,000 report stays empty until that duty is in force in Wales.
Each supplier then gets a Procurement Act 2023 section, invoices ask for a received date and VAT, and three reports fill in. This is a guide, not legal advice. See Procurement Act 2023 for public bodies.
Teams
Professional plan and above, admins only. Set up each team that works in SupplierVault: what it does (procurement, supplier management or both), the areas it covers, the modules it sees, whether it must accept suppliers handed over at go-live, and, for procurement teams, who signs off each tier and an optional second sign-off. See Teams.
Who reviews what, by area
For areas with their own teams. A grid of team × area lets you name the person who gets that team's tasks for suppliers in that area. "Leave a box on "Team default" to use the first person in that team. Changes apply to new tasks." Existing tasks keep their assignee; use "Hand over work" on the Stakeholders page to move them.
Supplier scorecard
The measures suppliers are scored on, 1 to 5 each quarter, with a weight for each. Weights don't need to add up to 100: the score is a weighted average. The standard six are:
| Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| Service delivery | 25 |
| Commercial | 20 |
| Financial health | 10 |
| Risk and compliance | 15 |
| Innovation | 10 |
| Stakeholder satisfaction (filled from the stakeholder survey) | 20 |
Click "Save scorecard", or "Use the standard six" to go back to these. See Reviews and governance.
Documents
"Where contracts, quotes and evidence are kept." Choose the "Document storage" option:
- "Upload or link, whichever suits" (default)
- "Links only: keep files in SharePoint, OneDrive or Google Drive"
- "Upload to SupplierVault only"
With links only, nothing is uploaded and files stay under your own retention and access rules. Use "People in your organisation" sharing links so they keep working. Links must start with https://.
"Purchase requests need a supplier quote": "Yes, before the order is placed" (default) or "No, optional".
Sign-in
This panel explains how your team signs in. There is nothing to set here.
- People can sign in with Continue with Microsoft (Microsoft 365 / Entra ID work accounts), Continue with Google, or their work email and a SupplierVault password of at least 8 characters.
- An admin can switch on Company sign-in only, lock it to your own Microsoft tenant or Google Workspace domain, and require two-step sign-in for everyone in Account › Organisation.
- On the Enterprise plan, your IT team's Microsoft Entra ID or Okta can add and remove people for you. See Add and remove people automatically.
- Invite colleagues from Account › Team: they get an email invitation.
- Suppliers never use your company login. Each supplier contact gets their own secure, time-limited portal link, which you can turn off at any time.
See Sign in with Microsoft or Google and Account, team and security.
Accounting software
Connections to Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Accounting, Sage 200 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central aren't in Settings. An admin sets them up in Account › Organisation › Accounting software, where each connection also has Choose what to read and Check matches. Bills in other currencies are converted using the exchange rates below. See Connect your accounting software.
Exchange rates
Exchange rates look after themselves. "Use the European Central Bank's daily reference rates" is ticked for every organisation: SupplierVault fetches the official mid-market rates every working day, and "Latest rates" shows the date they're from. Nobody needs to type rates in.
The table shows, for each currency, the daily rate (what 1 unit is worth in your reporting currency) and a fixed rate box. If Finance uses its own monthly or budget rate for a currency, type it in the fixed rate box: it's used instead of the daily rate for that currency, and the daily rate shows "(not used)". Clear the box to go back to the daily rate. Once you've fixed a rate, you can also note "Fixed rates effective from" and a "Source of fixed rates". The example column shows the effect.
Untick the box to use only the rates Finance fixes. A currency in use with no rate then shows "No rate for X. Amounts in this currency are counted 1:1 until a rate is added." Changing the reporting currency recalculates the daily rates automatically and converts any fixed rates. Rates are only used to compare like with like in reports and approval limits: SupplierVault never converts or moves money.
Approval rules and thresholds set elsewhere
| Rule | Where to change it | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Sourcing policy thresholds | Reviews & governance → framework | Up to 25,000: one written quote and budget holder approval. Up to 100,000: three written quotes. Up to 1,000,000: RFP (formal tender). Above: RFP and executive committee approval. |
| Go-live approver by tier | Tier policy | T1 executive or senior leader; T2 senior manager; T3 department manager; T4 supplier manager or Procurement. |
| Risk re-assessment and contract review cycles | Tier policy | Months per tier (0 means only when triggered). |
| Purchase sign-off limits | Settings › Purchase sign-off limits (admins) | Up to 4 extra sign-offs above amounts you choose, each by a team or a named person. Default: Finance over 10,000 in your reporting currency. See Approval limits. |
| Separation of duties | Settings › Organisation | Optional: "A supplier's manager can't approve their own supplier to go live". Always on: nobody signs off their own purchase request, each sign-off comes from a different person, whoever records a bank detail change can't make the call-back, and whoever makes the call-back can't release payments. |
| Keep closed suppliers' records for (years) | Settings › Organisation | 1 to 25 years, default 6, counted from the end of the financial year the supplier closed in. Enforced on our servers too. See Retention and legal hold. |
| Bank detail change release | Settings › Organisation › Who can release new bank details | Always needs a confirmed call-back, a Confirmation of Payee result that isn't "no match", a recorded penny test, and a second person to release it. By default any second person can release; tick names to limit it. |
Other fixed rules: whoever raised a purchase request can't sign it off; sign-offs, go-live approvals and bank detail releases are recorded as the signed-in person, and as given on someone's behalf when they're covering for them.
Teams
The standard teams are Procurement, Supplier management, Legal, Security, Privacy, Finance, IT, Infrastructure, Facilities, HR and Executive. Add others with "+ Add a team…" when adding a stakeholder. Tasks for a team go to the first person in that team unless the review-by-area grid names someone. See Stakeholders and templates.
Email summaries and Microsoft Teams
The Email summaries and Microsoft Teams panel says where these are set: the weekly email in Account › You, and team mailboxes and Teams posts in Account › Organisation (admins). If the Get set up checklist was hidden, Show the set-up checklist at the top of Settings brings it back.
Related
- Account, team and security
- Modules and forms
- How figures are calculated
- Importing suppliers
- Procurement Act 2023 for public bodies
- Connect your accounting software