Parties and contacts

What this page helps you do

Parties is the organisation-wide contact register for businesses and people that farms work with. One party can hold several roles, such as both supplier and haulier. The register is shared across the tenant’s farms; creating a party does not itself create a buyer route, delivery, purchase order or payment.

Open Farm Portal → Manage → Suppliers, customers and contacts on any farm you can access. The page heading is Parties. Although you open it from a farm, the records belong to the organisation and are available to its other farms. An Owner or Manager can create, edit, archive and restore a party. Other farm members can use the register in workflows for which they have access, but cannot change its records.

Search before adding an entry. Farmlync currently allows two parties with the same name or registration number, and the web page does not provide a merge action for repairing duplicates.

Find a party

Control	What it does
Role	Choose All roles or one role. A party with several roles matches each role it holds.
Search	Matches the party’s name, legal name or registration number. It does not search phone, email, city or notes.
Show archived	Includes archived records as well as active ones. Clear it to see active records only.
Page controls	Move through the 20-record pages of the filtered list. Changing a filter returns to the first page.

The table shows Name (with legal name below when present), Roles, Registration, Location (city) and Status. If the register cannot load, use its retry control. “No parties match these filters” means the current filter found no row; clear the filter before concluding the register is empty.

Add or edit a party

Select New party, or use the row’s Edit icon to open the same form with saved values. Select at least one role. The available role labels are Abattoir, AI technician, Breed society, Buyer, Disposal collector, Haulier, Market, Milk recording org, Supplier and Vet. Select multiple roles when the same party performs several functions.

Form control	What to enter and check
Name	Required display name, up to 200 characters. Use the name operators will recognise.
Roles	At least one of the offered roles. These classify the party for other workflows; they do not give the party a Farmlync user account.
Contact person	Optional individual to contact about this party, up to 150 characters.
Phone	Optional telephone number, up to 40 characters. Farmlync stores the supplied text and does not reformat the number.
Email	Optional email address, up to 254 characters. The web form checks that it resembles an email address.
Legal name	Optional registered name, up to 200 characters, if different from Name.
Registration no.	Optional external registry or business reference, up to 100 characters.
VAT number	Optional tax reference, up to 50 characters.
Country code	Optional country code of up to two characters, such as GB. It is saved in uppercase. Farmlync does not currently check the value against a country list, so confirm it before saving.
Address, City, Postcode	Optional address details, with maximum lengths of 300, 100 and 20 characters respectively.
Notes	Optional free text. Keep it within 1,000 characters and use it for operational context rather than as a transaction record.

Choose Save to create or update the entry. Save is unavailable until Name and at least one Role are present. A success message confirms the write; an error message means the entry was not saved. The browser does not show counters for most limits, so shorten the affected value if the server reports that it is too long. Cancel closes the form without submitting it.

Changing a role affects where the party is offered in future selectors. For example, a party must hold Buyer to appear as a milk buyer choice and Vet to appear in a vet selector. It does not alter historical records that already refer to the party.

Archive or restore

The row’s Archive icon changes an active party to Archived immediately; there is no confirmation dialog. The same position shows Restore for an archived party. To find a party to restore, turn on Show archived, then use its Restore icon. Archiving hides it from the default active list and from new active-party selections; it does not delete the record or erase earlier farm transactions. After either action, wait for the Updated message and confirm the status in the list.

Where parties are used

Operational forms use role-specific searchable selectors rather than asking you to type the same organisation repeatedly. Each selector searches active matching parties and initially returns up to 50 results; type part of the name or registration number to narrow a longer register. If the saved party is not in the first result page, Farmlync still retrieves and displays that selected record.

Typical uses include buyers and milk routes, suppliers and inventory purchasing, vets and animal-health records, hauliers, markets, abattoirs, disposal collectors, AI technicians, breed societies and milk-recording organisations. A role makes a party available to the relevant workflow; the workflow’s own terms, movements, deliveries and records remain separate.

For milk buyers, the party record can be linked from the buyer form, but buyer terms, routes and deliveries are maintained separately. Follow Buyers and Routes after creating the party.