Suppliers and locations

Suppliers and locations support rate pricing, location-based price selection, and project context.

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Supplier records

A supplier is a role on a company in the Companies register. To add a supplier, open Companies and create or edit a company record, then tick Supplier. Once ticked, the company’s prices are priceable from the resource library. Clearing the Supplier tick removes that company from the resource library. The Companies register replaces the previous separate Suppliers page. If you have a bookmark to /suppliers, Stralos redirects it to /companies with the list pre-filtered to suppliers and shows a banner explaining the move. Dismiss the banner to clear it; the filter stays applied. A rate option links to a supplier’s unique company identity, not its display name. Renaming a supplier does not break existing price links. In the owner and location picker, choose the supplier and then its specific location or All locations. If suppliers have similar names, use the location details to select the correct record.

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Locations

Stralos holds two distinct sets of locations:

• Your company’s own sites: offices, yards, and depots that belong to your company.
• Company locations: branches, yards, quarries, or depots belonging to a supplier.

Both types are visible together at Rates & resources → Locations. The register lists active locations only. Use the ownership filter to narrow the list to your company’s own sites, all supplier sites, or a specific supplier company. To add or edit a location, open Rates & resources → Locations:

• To add one of your company’s own sites, click Add location. A panel slides in from the right; the locations table stays visible behind it. Set Location type to Internal location. Only admins can add your company’s own sites; members can add supplier locations and are asked to get their admin to add a missing office or yard.
• To add a supplier location, click Add location, set Location type to Supplier location, and choose the Supplier company. If you filter the register to a specific supplier first, that supplier is pre-selected in the panel. If the supplier does not exist yet, select + New supplier… in the supplier picker to create it in place.
• To edit any location, click the location name or the Open button on any row, then click Edit on the record.

You can also add a company location directly from the company record. Open the company, go to Locations, and click Add location. This route pre-selects that company and works for its first or any later location. Both types appear as owner and location options in the rate editor, and both can be given coordinates to make them route-resolvable. To add a new location from within the resource library, either in the quick-entry row or in the option editor, select Add location directly below the owner and location picker. A panel slides in from the right. The Company field pre-fills from your current picker selection, but you can choose any owner: your company for an internal site, or any active supplier for their branch or yard. Ownership cannot be changed after you save the location. Select Create new supplier from the same picker to add a supplier company before adding its location.

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Your own prices

Rate pickers group your company’s own yards and depots separately from supplier quarries and branches. Your company appears above suppliers under its current display name; no separate internal source record is required. The company group offers:

• Acme Construction — All locations: prices the rate against your company as a whole, without naming a specific place.
• Add Acme Construction location: creates a specific company-owned yard or depot.

Renaming the company updates this picker label because company-scoped prices use the current company name.

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Location fields

When creating or editing a location, you can set:

• Owner (create only): your company or a supplier company.
• Name: required.
• Kind: one of office, yard, depot, branch, quarry, or other.
• Status: Active or Retired. Retiring a location removes it from future pricing and from the Rates & resources → Locations register. The record is kept for history and historic estimates retain it.
• Address: address line, city, region, and country code. Required.
• Coordinates: latitude and longitude. Required. They are set when you pick an address from the search list or drop a pin on the map.
• Phone, Email, and GST number: shown on your company’s own sites only, and optional. Enter the GST number as 8 or 9 digits, for example 123-456-789. A Tender download uses the project office’s value for each field when it is filled in, otherwise your company’s value from Company contact details.

Stralos measures distances from a location’s coordinates, so a typed address is not enough. Pick the address from the search list, or drop a pin; when you drop a pin, Stralos fills in the address for that point. Save stays unavailable until the location has both. With no address line, the button says “Please add the site’s address so we can work out distances.” With a typed address but no coordinates, it says “Please choose the address from the list so we can find it on the map.” Locations saved before addresses were required still open and can still be priced. They show No address for this site in lists and pickers, and a location page without coordinates shows No coordinates. Add the address before you save changes to one of these locations. When editing an existing location, click Edit to make fields editable. Click Save changes to apply your edits or Cancel to discard them. While a save is in progress, the fields become read-only.

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Duplicate locations

No company, including your own, can have two active locations with the same name at the same address. If you save one, Stralos shows the problem under Name and names the existing location, for example “You already have a location called Yard at 12 Main Road. Please use that one, or give this one a different name.” Use the existing location, or give the new one a different name.

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Shared address notice

Different companies can have sites at the same address. When you pick an address where another company, or your own company, already has an active site, Stralos shows a notice such as “Heads up: Atlas Group also has a site at this address (Ensors yard). You can still save.” The notice does not stop you saving.

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Your default office

The Rates & resources → Locations register shows a Your default badge on the office that is currently your personal default. Each person’s default is independent. Changing yours does not affect anyone else’s. To set a different default, open the row menu (the kebab icon at the end of the row) on any of your company’s own offices that is not already your default and click Make my default. The badge moves to that office immediately. Make my default only appears on your company’s own offices. It is not available on company-owned locations such as supplier branches or quarries. If your default office is retired, Stralos moves your effective default to the first-created active office. Restoring your chosen office makes it your effective default again. Your default office is used to pre-select the Office field when you create a new project.

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Retire a location

To retire a location, open the row menu (the kebab icon at the end of the row) in Rates & resources → Locations and click Retire location. A confirmation dialog names the location. Confirm to retire it. Retiring a location removes it from the Rates & resources → Locations register immediately. It is also removed from the Locations panel on the company’s record and no longer counted in the Locations column on the companies register. The record is kept for history, and historic estimates that referenced it retain the full location details. Future pricing will no longer include the location.

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Ownership filter

The Rates & resources → Locations register groups locations by owner and provides an ownership filter: The search box matches on name, address, and supplier name.

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Location-sensitive pricing

Use supplier and company locations when pricing is affected by:

• Disposal location.
• Material source.
• Regional labour or plant rates.

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Closest quarry suppliers panel

The Overview tab of the estimate workspace includes a Closest quarry suppliers panel. It lists the ten closest suppliers with rates for quarry materials used by the estimate, ranked by driving distance. Distance and travel time are stored against the project and reused on subsequent loads. When every supplier site has a distance, the panel shows each supplier’s distance, travel time, and a cost comparison across the materials in the estimate. Travel times under an hour show in minutes (for example, 45 min); longer times show in hours and minutes (for example, 4 h 58 min). A site’s address names its city and region once, even when the address line already includes them.

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Notices for sites without a distance

Distance is measured for each supplier site on its own. When a site cannot be measured, the panel still shows every site that was measured and adds an orange notice for each group of affected sites. The rest of the comparison is unaffected, and the rates for those sites are still priced. There are four notice types: Each notice names the affected sites as “Supplier — Site”. Up to six names are listed; when more are affected, the notice shows the first six and a count of the rest.

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Good practice

• Manage supplier records in the Companies register, not in the rate editor.
• Keep location names consistent.
• Pick each location’s address from the search list, or drop a pin, so its coordinates are accurate.
• Link material and disposal rate options to the correct supplier location.
• Avoid encoding multiple assumptions into one location label.
• Add notes when a supplier price is only valid for a narrow condition.