Vendor Numbers and Site Codes

Vendor Numbers and Site Codes together comprise the unique key to defining a supplier profile in PaymentWorks. This article describes those keys.

PaymentWorks uses a 2-level identification model, using the Vendor Number and Site Code fields to identify the corresponding vendor record in the ERP.

• The PaymentWorks Vendor Number field generally maps to the top-level vendor ID in the ERP

• The Site Code field is the unique ID for an address (or other object) within a vendor number in your ERP. Site Codes allow payers to track one vendor with multiple locations and payment profiles.

Vendor Numbers

The Vendor Number in PaymentWorks generally corresponds to the record ID for that supplier in the ERP. There are cases where the integration uses a heuristic to prepend or append a metadata value to the ID. For example, in cases where the supplier data is shared across multiple payer organizations, and a prefix is added to the supplier ID to clarify which organization the record belongs to.

Depending on the payer organization, Vendor Numbers may be directly correlated to TINs. That is, some ERPs or organizational policies will not allow two different top-level vendor numbers to share the same TIN. However, this is not a PaymentWorks requirement.

Site Codes

A Site Code is the unique ID for an address within a vendor number in your ERP. Site Codes allow payers to track one vendor with multiple locations and payment profiles.

In the image below, you will see that each supplier address for McGraw-Hill has the same Vendor Number, but a unique Site Code to differentiate the various locations.

• The supplier operates under a single TIN but may operate out of several locations

• The separate locations may be managed by different payee accounts.

• Alternatively, one payee account can manage multiple locations

Five McGraw-Hill locations, each with a different SiteCode

Each ERP will have a different way of differentiating among a supplier’s locations / sites, if there are more than one.

Changing Vendor Numbers and Site Codes

PaymentWorks assumes that the connected Vendor Number and Site Code will not change. They are the key fields with which supplier profile information in PaymentWorks is associated with a specific record in your ERP.

However, on rare occasions, you may need to change the Vendor Number and Site Code on a connection. For more information on how to do this, see the Changing Vendor Numbers and Site Codes article.

Are Site Codes Required?

PaymentWorks does not technically require Site Codes. However, we strongly recommend always providing a Site Code, particularly when some vendor will have multiple locations associated with a Vendor Number.

Important note: If a vendor record is uploaded to PaymentWorks without a Site Code, a subsequent upload with a record containing that Vendor Number with a Site Code will overwrite the original record.

In other words, because PaymentWorks enables Site Codes to be added to vendor records that previously had none, you should not try to mix vendor records with and without Site Codes for the same Vendor Number.

Next Steps

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