Merchant and merchant group

A merchant is a retailer from whom you buy goods, such as a hardware store or discount retailer. Setting up merchants is optional. One advantage of doing so is for tax reporting purposes. When adding a merchant, you enter the tax ID number for the merchant, and the income code used. By assigning income codes to active merchants, you can track 1099 reportable income for any purchases you made from them. For information on income codes and 1099 reporting, see the Accounts Payable User Guide.

Merchants can be the same as an Accounts Payable vendor, or they can be different. For example, a corporate office can be set up as a vendor, but the individual retail stores reporting to corporate can be set up as merchants. You associate a merchant with an Accounts Payable vendor using P-Card Merchant Cross Reference (PD06.1). By doing so, you can track the total amount that you spent for the vendor, without having to add up the totals from several retail stores belonging to the same corporation.

Merchants can be gathered together into a merchant group. When reviewing cardholder requests, administrators decide whether to include or exclude merchants in the merchant group from the P-Card transactions. If merchants are included, only the merchants belonging to the merchant group are valid for that card. If merchants are excluded, only merchants that are not in the merchant group are valid for that card.

Merchant groups belong to a program, and are set up in one of two ways: by merchant name, or by merchant category code.

You cannot delete a merchant if it is assigned to a merchant group.