Vendors
Build a vendor network that remembers the useful details
Editorial team · Reviewed
A useful vendor directory contains more than a name and phone number. It helps the next booking conversation by preserving factual service information, past collaboration and the limits of what your team actually knows.
A practical sequence
- Separate public business details from private working notes.
- Record the services, geographic coverage and practical requirements you have confirmed.
- Keep the date and source of important information.
- Ask before sharing a person's contact details or a private recommendation.
Work through an example
A catering company has a general sales email and a different event captain for each wedding. The directory stores the business contact; the individual wedding stores its assigned captain and day-of number. Updating one wedding should not accidentally replace the contact for every event.
Where judgement matters
Treat ratings and recommendations as contextual judgements, not universal facts. Record the kind of event and what you observed. Give the team a way to correct outdated information without rewriting the history of a completed wedding.
Make it usable
Open the working tool and replace its sample assumptions with your own. Adapt the structured template to record the resulting decisions and handoffs. Review the finished version with the person responsible before it becomes an instruction to someone else.
Work the decision
A practice case
An original fictional scenario. Numbers are illustrative inputs; this is not a customer result or a provider performance claim.
A florist’s owner refers you to an installation lead, while a separate warehouse contact manages vessel returns. Putting all three numbers into one notes box makes it easy to call the wrong person during setup. Model the business, its people and their responsibilities separately before expanding the directory.
| Decision | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Keep one business record with named contacts. | This avoids duplicate supplier entries while preserving the different people needed for a particular job. |
| Treat a referral as an attributed introduction. | A contact being in your directory does not mean they endorsed every later booking. |
| Publish only information approved for a public profile. | Private pricing, candid notes and personal numbers belong in a restricted business context. |
Make one usable artifact
Build a sample supplier card showing public business details, private notes, service specialties, on-site contact and the source of the introduction.
Then test the difficult case
The installation lead leaves the company. Replace the active contact without rewriting historical messages or losing who confirmed the earlier wedding.
Use the linked tool or structured template below to record the result. Confirm it against the actual people, agreements and permissions before using it for an event.