Vendor Onboarding for ECI Spruce
A new vendor fills in one page under your name: W-9, certificate of insurance, ACH form, terms. Lunica reads and checks each one, prepares the vendor record the way Spruce wants it, and a person keys it. Certificates are watched to expiry.
Accounts payableUpdated Oct 202620 ERPs
See it work on Spruce.
Click through the steps. Fictional data, in Spruce’s terms; the real thing runs on Spruce.
One page under Ridgeline’s name: W-9, certificate, ACH form, terms. It saves as they go.
The problem, as it happens in Spruce.
A new vendor gets set up in Spruce because purchasing needs a PO today. The W-9 comes later, or never. The certificate of insurance is a photo of a certificate from last year. The ACH form arrives by email, gets keyed from the email, and nobody calls the bank to check the account. The vendor file has the name the buyer typed and a blank where the terms go.
In January the 1099s go out with a missing EIN. A sub’s insurance lapsed in June and nobody knew. The ACH change that came by email in August was not from the vendor. Each one is a different bad day, and each one started with a record that was never finished.
How it works.
- 1
The vendor fills in one page
A hosted page under your name, sent to the vendor from Lunica: legal name, EIN, address, the W-9 signed on the page or uploaded, certificate of insurance, ACH form, remit-to, the terms they offer. It saves as they go.
- 2
Each document is read and checked
The W-9 is read and the EIN format and name checked. The certificate is read for the insurer, the limits, the expiry and whether you’re named. The bank account is verified before it’s trusted. Anything short is asked for, on the page.
- 3
The record is prepared for Spruce
Vendor name, remit-to, terms, 1099 flag, bank details, laid out the way the vendor file in Spruce wants them, with the documents behind as one packet. AP checks it. A person keys it.
- 4
Expirations are watched
The certificate’s expiry is on a calendar. Before it lapses, a renewal request to the vendor is drafted; a person sends it. A bank change later goes through the same verification, never from an email.
How it connects to Spruce.
Lunica reads Spruce’s vendor file through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database, to check whether the vendor already exists, under what name and terms, and to see open POs against a vendor whose certificate is lapsing. The documents themselves live on the Lunica server with the vendor’s packet.
Nothing is written to Spruce by Lunica, and nothing is sent to a vendor on its own. The vendor record goes back as a Spruce import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared. Requests to the vendor for a missing document or a renewal are drafts until a person sends them.
What a week looks like.
- No vendor is keyed into Spruce with a blank where the EIN goes.
- Every certificate of insurance has an expiry date somebody is watching.
- Bank details come through verification, never from an email.
- The 1099 run finds every vendor already flagged.
Questions
Does Lunica create the vendor in Spruce?
Not on its own. It prepares the record and the packet. It reaches Spruce as a Spruce import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared. Nothing changes in Spruce without a person.
Where does the vendor fill this in?
On a page under your name, hosted by Lunica, from a link your buyer or AP sends. The W-9 can be signed on the page or uploaded.
How is the bank account verified?
The bank account is verified before it is trusted, the same way the credit application verifies an applicant’s bank. A later change to bank details goes through it again.
What does it check on the certificate of insurance?
Insurer, policy type, limits against what you require, the expiry, and whether your company is named as certificate holder or additional insured.
What about vendors we already have?
A lapsed certificate or a missing W-9 on an existing vendor can be requested from the same page. The record in Spruce is matched by name and EIN so nothing is set up twice.
Who gets told when a certificate lapses?
Whoever you enrol: AP, purchasing, the controller. The renewal request to the vendor is drafted; a person sends it.
Does it need a server?
Lunica runs on one Windows server inside your network, or beside ECI’s hosted Spruce, set up and maintained by Lunica. It reads ECI Spruce through a read-only login to the Spruce SQL Server database. There is no inbound connection from outside your network.
What does Lunica read in Spruce?
The customer account, open items and terms, purchase orders and receipts, the item record, quotes and order history, as each workflow needs them. Read-only, and only the rows a task is about.
Can it post to Spruce?
Nothing lands in Spruce without a person. What belongs in Spruce goes back as a Spruce import where one exists, or keyed by your team from what Lunica prepared.
What about our documents?
Invoice copies and scans keep living in Spruce document imaging. Lunica reads them when a workflow needs one and never writes to them.
The same workflow, on another ERP.
Vendor Onboarding is written for every system on the list. You’re reading the Spruce version.
See it on your Spruce data.
Thirty minutes. We walk the workflow on Spruce data, then map it to yours.