SM Space · Customer & Supplier Records
Customer and Supplier Database for Your Whole Business
SM Space Partners is the customer and supplier database inside the SM Space ERP system. A partner record holds the company’s registered name, company number, website, addresses and bank details — and holds them once, whether you buy from them, sell to them, or both. Every purchase order, sales invoice and payment points at that record.
The names, numbers, addresses and bank details that cost you money when they are wrong.
Last updated: September 2026
One record, everywhere
Northgate Limited · company no. 09482210
- Purchase order PUR-000312 you buying from them
- Sales invoice INV-000871 you selling to them
- Payment PAY-000094 you settling it
all three point at Northgate Limited one partner record, not three copies of a name
change the address once and all three are right
Two directions, one company
the same business, filed twice
Customer file
Northgate Limited
you sell to them
Supplier file
Northgate Ltd
you buy from them
- Company no.09482210
- Websitenorthgate.example
store a fact twice and the second copy is wrong the first time somebody updates the first
The name on the transfer
paying Northgate Limited · $12,400
- PayNorthgate Limitedthe supplier on the invoice
- Account holderMeridian Finance Ltdthey sold their invoices on — its own field
$12,400 sent — beneficiary matches the account
Without that field: $12,400 to “Northgate Limited” — bounced by the bank, found a week later
one field, and the payment is right the first time
Four spellings, one filter
what free text collected on four vendors
- REMIT_TO
- Remit To
- remit-to
- Remittance
Address type REMIT_TO 1 of 4 found — matching is exact
Address type REMIT TO 4 of 4 found
a closed list of five: registered, order-from, remit-to, ship-from, other
Above: one partner record behind a purchase order, a sales invoice and a payment; a customer file and a supplier file merging into one company; a payment made out to the finance company that bought the supplier’s invoices; and four spellings of one address type collapsing into a list a filter can actually find.
What you can do
- Hold the registered name, company number and website on the record itself, not copied onto a buying file and a selling file
- Search and filter by company registration number, which is often all a duplicate check has to go on
- Keep two records for one company mid-merger, until somebody decides which one survives
- Give a partner as many addresses as it actually has, each one typed from a fixed list
- Mark the one address that goes on their paperwork — and be stopped from picking another company’s
- Record who you actually pay, with the account holder’s name as its own field
- Hold bank details for customers too, for refunds, overpayments and direct debits
- Keep account numbers and IBANs away from the built-in AI assistant
01
One Record for a Customer Who Is Also a Supplier
Northgate Ltd buys from you and sells to you. That is one company, and its registered name, its company number and its website are facts about the company — not about which direction the money is going.
So SM Space holds them on the partner record itself, rather than on the buying file and the selling file separately. The reason is worth saying out loud, because everyone has lived it: the moment you store a fact twice, the second copy is wrong the first time somebody updates the first one. Northgate becomes “Northgate Limited” on the customer side, stays “Northgate Ltd” on the supplier side, and now you have two companies.
What genuinely depends on direction stays where it belongs. Payment terms, credit limits and tax registration live on the purchase-side and sales-side profiles, because your terms for buying from Northgate are not your terms for selling to them.
held once true of the company whichever way you trade
- Registered nameNorthgate Limited
- Company no.09482210
- Websitenorthgate.example
Buying from them · supplier profile
- Payment termsNet 45 from invoice date
- Supplier groupSteel & fabrication
- Tax numberheld here, not on the record
Selling to them · customer profile
- Payment termsNet 30 from statement
- Credit limit$50,000
- Tax numberheld here, not on the record
The three facts at the top are stored once, on the record. Everything under them depends on which direction you are trading in, so it lives on the profile for that direction — your terms for buying from Northgate are not your terms for selling to them.
02
A Company Number Is Not a Tax Number
These are two different things, and most systems give you one box for both. A company registration number is issued once, when the business is incorporated. A tax number is issued by a tax authority — and a company registered in three places has three of them.
Put them in one box and sooner or later the wrong one is printed on a tax document. In SM Space they are separate fields. The registration number is indexed and filterable, because an onboarding check or a duplicate sweep usually arrives holding the company number and nothing else: type 09482210 and you get the record, whichever way you trade with it.
It is deliberately not forced to be unique. A business legitimately holds two records for one legal entity in the middle of a merger, and a unique index would refuse the second one before anybody had decided which survives. Finding the duplicate is the job; refusing to let you record what is true is not.
Registration number 09482210 2 records
| Code | Name on the record | Relationship | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| V-00318 | Northgate Ltd | Supplier since 2021 | Active |
| C-00204 | Northgate Limited | Customer since 2024 | Active |
Same company number, two records, mid-merger. Both are kept until somebody decides which one survives.
Company registration number
09482210 issued once, when the business was incorporated. On the record, indexed, filterable.
Tax number
a different thing issued by a tax authority, one per place the company registers. Its own field, on the buying and selling profiles.
One box for both is how the wrong number ends up printed on a tax document.
03
Supplier Bank Details and Payment Records
Bank details for a supplier used to live in somebody’s email. In SM Space they are a record on the partner, and one field on it is the one that saves you: the account holder’s name is its own box, not a copy of the partner’s name.
That sounds pedantic until it isn’t. Northgate have sold their invoices on, so the money goes to Meridian Finance Ltd — same payment, different name on the account. A $12,400 transfer with “Northgate Limited” as the beneficiary is bounced by the bank, and you find out a week later. Record the account holder as Meridian Finance Ltd and it is right the first time.
It works for customers too — refunds, overpayments and direct-debit mandates all need the customer’s account. A bank record has to belong to exactly one partner and has to have somewhere to pay into: leave out both the account number and the IBAN and you are told so, in those words, rather than saving a row that cannot settle anything.
And it is kept away from the built-in AI assistant on purpose, twice over. The bank accounts endpoint has no assistant permission at all, and separately, account numbers, IBANs and routing numbers are stripped out of anything the assistant is shown. The assistant can tell you who a supplier is. It cannot read their bank details.
- Account label Factoring — Meridian
- Bank name Aldermore Bank plc
- Account holder Meridian Finance Ltd its own field — not a copy of the partner’s name
- Account number •••• 4471
- IBAN GB29 •••• •••• 4471
- SWIFT ALDRGB21
The transfer that goes through
PayMeridian Finance Ltd
$12,400
sent beneficiary matches the account
The same transfer, the obvious way
PayNorthgate Limited
$12,400
bounced beneficiary name does not match
What the built-in AI assistant is shown
- Northgate Limited
- Aldermore Bank plc
- Account number
- IBAN
- Routing number
The endpoint has no assistant permission, and those three field names are stripped from any schema it is shown. Either one alone would do it; both are in place.
A bank record belongs to exactly one partner and has to have somewhere to pay into. Leave out both the account number and the IBAN and you are told so, rather than saving a row that cannot settle anything.
04
Multiple Addresses, Each With a Purpose
A partner can have as many addresses as it actually has: the registered office, the depot you order from, where the payment goes, where the goods ship from. Each one is typed, from a fixed list, so a filter for remit-to addresses finds all of them.
That last part is a real fix, not a tidy-up. When the type was free text, four people recording the same thing typed REMIT_TO, Remit To, remit-to and Remittance — and because matching is exact, a search for remit-to addresses found one of the four. Closing the list fixed a broken join, not a loose rule.
One address is also marked as the address for that partner, the one that goes on their paperwork. Point it at an address belonging to a different company and the save is refused: “That address belongs to a different vendor, so it cannot be this one’s primary address.” Without that check the save would succeed, read back perfectly, and put Northgate’s yard on Summit Metals’ next purchase order.
| Type | What it is | Address | Primary |
|---|---|---|---|
| REGISTERED | Registered office | 12 Kingsway, Manchester M2 4WU | on the paperwork |
| ORDER_FROM | Where you order | Unit 7, Trafford Park, Manchester M17 1AB | — |
| REMIT_TO | Where money goes | Meridian Finance, 40 Gracechurch St, London | — |
| SHIP_FROM | Where goods leave | Northgate Yard, Salford M50 2EQ | — |
refused “That address belongs to a different vendor, so it cannot be this one’s primary address.”
What free text collected, before the list was closed
- REMIT_TO
- Remit To
- remit-to
- Remittance
Address type REMIT_TO 1 of 4 found
Matching is exact, so four spellings of one thing is a broken join, not a loose rule. With the list closed, the same filter finds all four.
How SM Space customer and supplier database compares
The one-line answers buyers usually ask for, before the longer argument underneath them.
- One record per company Identity is held once, whichever way you trade.
- Typed addresses As many as a partner has, each from a fixed list.
- Partner bank accounts Who you actually pay, with the account holder’s own name.
- Company number search Indexed and filterable, for onboarding and duplicate checks.
- Bank data withheld from AI Account numbers, IBANs and routing numbers never reach the assistant.
- Cloud Runs in a web browser, nothing to install.
- Audit trail Every record keeps who changed it, and when.
How it fits with the rest of SM Space
This is not an address book sitting beside the business. It is the record that the purchase order, the sales invoice, the payment and the ledger entry all point at.
- Purchase order points at
- Supplier bill points at
- Sales invoice points at
- Payment points at
- Ledger entry points at
- reads Reporting — grouped by the same partner
- reads Audit & compliance — who changed the bank details
So correcting Northgate’s remit-to address corrects it everywhere, and nobody has to remember which of four lists is the current one. Purchasing and procurement raises orders against the vendor record and prints the address it names. Sales and invoicing bills the customer record, with the credit limit held on the selling profile. Accounting and finance pays the supplier into the bank account held here, and the entry posts against the same partner. Audit and compliance keeps the record of who changed those bank details, and when — which for this table is the question worth being able to answer.
Who this customer and supplier database is for
Small and mid-sized businesses whose partner data has quietly split in two. You have a suppliers tab, a customers tab, and a company that appears on both under two slightly different names. Somebody emails bank details around. Nobody is sure which of the three addresses on file is the one that goes on the invoice. SM Space is a cloud ERP system — it runs in a web browser, with no server to install.
Frequently asked questions
- What does SM Space Partners do?
- It is the customer and supplier database the rest of SM Space points at. It holds a company’s registered name, company number, website, addresses, contacts and bank details, and the facts that do not depend on which way you trade are held only once. Purchase orders, sales invoices, payments and ledger entries all reference the same partner record rather than their own copy.
- Can one company be both a customer and a supplier?
- Yes, and that is the case the database is built around. The facts that are true of the company whichever way you trade — registered name, company registration number, website — are held on the record itself, not copied onto a buying file and a selling file. What genuinely differs by direction, such as payment terms and credit limits, stays on the purchase-side and sales-side profiles.
- Can I store supplier bank details for payments?
- Yes. A partner can hold bank accounts with the bank name, account holder’s name, account number or IBAN, SWIFT code and routing number. The account holder’s name is its own field rather than a copy of the partner’s name, because a supplier who has sold their invoices on is paid in the finance company’s name. Customers can hold accounts too, for refunds and direct debits.
- Can a supplier have more than one address?
- Yes, as many as it has. Each address is typed from a fixed list — registered office, order-from, remit-to, ship-from or other — so a filter for remit-to addresses finds every one of them. One address is marked as the partner’s primary address, which is the one that goes on their paperwork.
- Can I find a duplicate supplier record?
- Yes. The company registration number is indexed and filterable, so you can search on the number an onboarding check or a duplicate sweep arrives with. It is deliberately not forced to be unique: a business legitimately holds two records for one legal entity mid-merger, and refusing the second would stop you recording what is actually true.
- Is our supplier bank data visible to the AI assistant?
- No. The bank accounts endpoint has no AI permission, and separately, account numbers, IBANs and routing numbers are stripped out of any schema the assistant is shown. Both are in place at once, so removing one of them would not expose the data. The assistant can tell you who a supplier is; it cannot read their bank details.
One record per company, everywhere in the system.
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