what is the best Jira template if you want to keep track of all vendors hired?

[Sandra Lawrence]

We are interested in possibly using jira to keep track of all of our vendor information - contract, summary description, contract information, financial info, project(s), etc.  Is there a Jira template out there best suited for this type of data?

[Iryna Komarnitska_SaaSJet_]

Hi @Sandra Lawrence ,

Try to use app, which created by my team - Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud.

In the Expenses tab, you can enter information about vendors and associate them with specific projects, people, and tasks in Jira.

You can also set up hourly ratings for employees and get detailed cost reports.

[Hamza Chundrigar]

Hi @Sandra Lawrence

I don’t think there is a particular template that would give you everything (or most of what) you need for tracking all vendor information. However, Jira does have a "Procurement Management" template that you might want to consider as a starting point.

Jira is highly customizable so you can tailor your fields and workflows to suit your needs. For example, you could add custom fields for project information or other vendor details you want to track depending on your particular needs and requirements.

Best regards,

Hamza

[Sandra Lawrence]

I am looking to create a portfolio of sorts of all my vendors that we have contracts. We want to store and manage the business side of efforts in Jira. I would like to think the work management tool would be the answer (as we have Jira for all our development projects) - but as I research Jira Work Management, I do not see anything that would let me create a vendor and store all their vital financial and contract information (with links to Jira development). Am I barking up the wrong tree for an answer to my dilemma? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

[Hamza Chundrigar]

Gotcha – unless I'm missing something, I don't see why you would be unable to store your vendor information within Jira, as a separate project (perhaps a business/JWM project).

Jira Work Management forms provide you with the freedom to add specific fields to your form that you can fill out to create an issue for your business project. For example:

1. You could create a company-managed project, and then create a custom issue type called "Vendor"
2. Then you could define which (custom) fields you want to capture as part of this "Vendor" issue type's screen.
3. Create a form and any necessary/required fields to it, so that it allows you/your team to fill out all of their vital financial/contract info. The form will help capture vendor info in a more structured and consistent way.
4. Once the form is submitted, it creates a new issue (which is your 'vendor'). You would also have the ability to create a sub-task, if say, you wanted to assign different aspects of work that needs to be managed for that particular vendor to multiple people.
5. You would then also be able to link this to your software development projects in Jira using "issue links".

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However, does your organization use Confluence? I've also seen other teams/companies create a vendor management database in Confluence. For instance, you could create a vendor template that includes different sections, such as payment terms, contract details, and any other metrics/sections in Confluence that captures all the necessary information you need and link it to Jira.

[Sandra Lawrence]

This is very helpful.  I have created a 'portfolio' of sorts (a list) of customers on Confluence.  If we keep this, we would want to be able to 'connect' to all of our customers that are working software projects (and are on Jira software).  I guess if we bought EasyBi for Confluence we could link the 2?

I really like Jira work management idea but we are not a cloub instance (we are a data center).  I think work management is only available for cloud....

[Sandra Lawrence]

Two additional concepts:

1. Have you ever heard of using component (the field) to capture vendor information?  I am not sure how that would work but some blogs have talked about this.  Have you ever heard of this?

2. Some have suggested using Manage Object Schema to create vendor data?  Any thoughts on that?