Suppliers
Every purchase invoice is linked to a supplier-type contact: who issued the invoice to you. The supplier groups all its purchases, holds its tax details (name, VAT number, country) and is one of the keys Aikount uses to avoid duplicates.
What a supplier is
A supplier is a contact seen from the purchase side. When you import an invoice with AI, the agent extracts the issuer and links it to an existing contact or creates a new one. That contact holds:
- The supplier's name.
- Its VAT number (NIF), which determines, among other things, whether the operation is domestic or intra-EU.
- Its country, relevant to the VAT treatment — see Input VAT and reverse charge.
Correct tax details matter: they decide whether the intra-EU reverse charge is applied properly.
The duplicate-supplier risk
The most common problem with suppliers is having the same supplier split across two contacts. It usually happens after a bulk import of invoices with poorly normalized contact data, or when the supplier is written two different ways.
Why is it a problem? Because if the supplier is duplicated, the same invoice could slip in twice —once per contact— and that would break deduplication.
Important. A duplicate supplier is the gateway to a duplicate purchase, and a duplicate purchase corrupts expenses, input VAT and reconciliation. Keeping supplier contacts clean is part of keeping purchases clean.
How Aikount handles it
Purchase deduplication doesn't rely on the contact alone: it also cross-checks by normalized name and by shared VAT number. So even if the same supplier sits in two contacts, the same invoice doesn't enter twice:
| Signal | What it compares | What for |
|---|---|---|
| Contact + invoice no. | The exact supplier and its number | Direct match |
| Normalized name | The name stripped of case, accents, etc. | Catch the same misspelled supplier |
| Shared VAT number | The tax identifier | Cross two contacts of the same supplier |
Even so, it's worth reviewing your supplier contacts now and then and merging the ones that are the same, especially if you came from a bulk import.
Good practices
- Fill in each supplier's VAT number; it's the most reliable signal both for cross-checking and for VAT.
- Check the country on EU suppliers, because it triggers the reverse charge.
- After a bulk load, spend some time spotting and unifying repeated suppliers.
Related
- Purchase deduplication — how invoice identity avoids duplicates.
- Input VAT and reverse charge — why supplier data changes the VAT.
- Import invoices with AI — how the agent links the supplier.