Manage Suppliers
Overview
A supplier in kolum is an external company you buy from. Suppliers are shared master data: one supplier record serves every regulation module, and its CBAM and EUDR data sit on their own tabs of that record. The separate Business Partners section that EUDR used to have is gone; anything you bookmarked there now opens the same supplier in the unified Suppliers section.
For EUDR, suppliers are central. They provide the underlying evidence for your due diligence, above all the geolocation of the plots where the commodities were produced, and the compliance documents that support your risk assessment.
🟢 Why this matters. EUDR compliance rests on data that comes from your suppliers: the geolocation of production plots, supporting documents, and proof of legal, deforestation-free production. The supplier record is where you hold those suppliers and collect that data. See the consolidated EUDR text.
A note on wording
Earlier versions of kolum called this record a business partner with a Supplier or Buyer role and a derived Supplier Type (Trader or Manufacturer). Those concepts no longer exist: a record in the Suppliers section is a supplier, full stop. Where the regulation speaks of your buyers, those are your customers; if you also act as a supplier to EU customers, they manage you in their own Suppliers list and you see them in your Buyers section.
How a supplier record is organised
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| General | Name and Identifier in the header, then Identifiers (including the optional BPNL for Catena-X), Address Details, and Contact Persons. |
| Associations | Production facilities of the supplier and the companies connected to it through your transactions. |
| CBAM | Purchased CBAM goods and their emission data. |
| EUDR | Compliance documents and the production locations (plot geolocation). |
When the EUDR module is selected, a supplier opens on its EUDR tab; switch to another tab whenever you need it.
In this section
- Add a supplier. Create a supplier record with its default contact person.
- Invite a supplier to connect. Send and manage the invitation that lets a supplier share data.
- Provide production locations and documents. Capture plot geolocation and EUDR documents on the EUDR tab.
- Bulk upload suppliers. Create many at once from a spreadsheet.
- Supplier upload template glossary. Every column in the upload template.
- Edit a supplier. Update identifiers, address, contacts, or EUDR data.
Working with the list
The Suppliers list shows Identifier, Name, City, Country, and the kolum Account Status, which tells you whether the supplier's contact person has accepted the invitation to kolum and created a supplier account (Not invited, Pending, Invitation revoked, Invitation declined, or Active), with the fitting Invite, Send reminder, Reinvite or Revoke action next to it. Accounts with CBAM enabled also see a CBAM Emission Data Status column. Use Add New, Upload & Download, Filters, View, and the Only show Suppliers related to Imports toggle.
Common Questions
What's new
Suppliers are managed in one place for CBAM and EUDR: the separate EUDR Business Partners section is gone, old links redirect to the unified Suppliers section, and each supplier's EUDR tab holds its production locations and compliance documents. The Suppliers list shows a clear kolum Account Status for every supplier.