Items and Suppliers

Every procurement document in GarmentFlow references two masters: the Item being bought and the Supplier it's being bought from. Get these right and every downstream document (RFQ, PO, PR, PI) flows. Get them wrong and you'll be cleaning up data for months.

Item

The ERPNext Item doctype is the universal product record. Every fabric, every trim, every label, every finished garment is an Item.

GarmentFlow extends Item with a handful of custom fields:

• Division — links to Division master.
• Tech Pack — links a finished garment Item back to its Tech Pack.
• Size — the size designation for garment variants.
• Variant — links to the Variant master (color/print/wash).

The rest of the Item form is ERPNext-native: Item Code, Item Name, Item Group, UOM, default warehouse, valuation method, accounting defaults, tax category.

Item naming

A discipline that pays off: pick an Item Code convention and stick to it. Most factories use a structure like:

• Raw materials: RM-{supplier}-{description} → RM-YKK-ZIP-5CM-NAVY
• Finished garments: FG-{brand}-{style code}-{size}-{variant} → FG-ACME-SS26-T001-M-NAVY

ERPNext supports naming series — set them on the Item once and ERPNext follows the pattern automatically.

Item Groups

The Item Group is hierarchical and decides which item is which. The install seeds:

• Raw Material → Fabrics, Buttons, Zippers, Threads, Packaging, Labels, Dyes.
• Apparel → Tops, Bottoms, Outerwear, Accessories, Footwear, Legwear, Formal Wear.

Add to this tree as your factory grows. The Raw Material Parent Group setting filters which items appear in raw-material pickers across the app, so keep the Raw Material branch tidy.

Templates vs variants

The thing that turns Item from a flat list into a useful catalog: variants. An Item Template like "YKK Zipper 5cm" can have variants for every size × color combination. This is its own page — see Item attributes for fashion.

Supplier

The Supplier doctype is your vendor master. One record per legal supplier entity. The fields worth populating from day one:

• Supplier Name and Supplier Group — categorize for reporting (Fabric, Trim, Service, etc.).
• Country — drives tax behavior and address formats.
• Default Currency — what they invoice you in.
• Addresses and Contacts — billing, shipping, primary contact.
• Default Payment Terms — Net 30, Net 60, advance, etc.
• Tax IDs — depending on country, GSTIN, VAT number, etc.
• Default Items — items typically bought from this supplier (speeds up RFQ and PO creation).
• Hold Type / Hold Reason — for suppliers you want to block from new POs without deleting.

Supplier portal access

Suppliers can have Website User accounts to log into the Supplier Portal — where they see Production Batches assigned to them, post OLE Receive/Dispatch entries, and view their warehouse stock. Set this up only for suppliers you want to have that visibility.

How they connect

Every procurement document links both:

• RFQ — one supplier, multiple items.
• Purchase Order — one supplier, multiple items.
• Purchase Receipt — references a PO, inherits the supplier and items.
• Purchase Invoice — references a PR (or PO), inherits both.

Clean Items and clean Suppliers mean clean downstream documents. Sloppy Items or Suppliers mean every document has to be patched up.

A working example

Setting up YKK as a supplier and adding their zipper line as items:

• Supplier: "YKK Vietnam Co., Ltd." Supplier Group = "Trim". Country = Vietnam. Currency = USD. Net 45 payment terms. Primary contact and shipping address populated.
• Item template: "YKK Vislon Zipper 5cm". Item Group = Raw Material → Zippers. UOM = piece. Linked to the supplier as Default Supplier.
• Variants: generated from the template across two attributes (Length and Color) — see the next page.

That's the foundation. Every PO for YKK zippers from here on inherits the right supplier, the right group, the right tax behavior.

What to do next

The variant story for apparel items is involved enough to deserve its own page. Move on to Item attributes for fashion.