How many of your vendors are actually live: non-blocked and transacting, not just sitting in the master.
At a glance
The count of vendors that are both non-blocked and recently active in Accounts Payable. A vendor is “active” if its status allows transactions (not on hold or blocked for invoicing/payment) and it has at least one purchase or payment in the recent window. This is the working supplier count, distinct from the total number of records in the vendor master, which is usually inflated by dormant, one-off, and duplicate vendors.
| What it counts | Vendors with a non-blocked status that have recent AP activity (a purchase invoice, a payment, or a posted vendor transaction) within the lookback window. In F&O this is the Vendor master (VendTable) filtered by blocking status with a join to recent vendor ledger activity; in Business Central it is the Vendor list filtered to non-blocked vendors with recent Vendor Ledger Entries. |
| What it is not | Not the raw vendor master count. Blocked, prospect-only, and long-dormant vendors are excluded. Not a spend figure, this is a headcount of suppliers. |
| Currency | Count metric, currency-independent. |
| Multi-Company | Aggregated across the selected legal entities. A vendor set up in multiple entities counts per entity unless de-duplicated by vendor identifier in your field map. |
| Time window | RT (real-time snapshot of currently active vendors) |
| Alert trigger | n/a |
| Roles | owner, operations, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A consumer-electronics retailer on Business Central with a single trading company. Snapshot 14 Apr 26. The vendor master has grown over eight years of trading and is far larger than the genuinely active supplier base.| Vendor segment | Records in master | Counts as active? |
|---|---|---|
| Suppliers invoiced or paid in last 90 days | 184 | Yes |
| Non-blocked, no recent activity (dormant) | 412 | No |
| Blocked / on hold | 27 | No |
| Prospect / never transacted | 63 | No |
| Active Vendors (this card) | 184 |
- The master holds 686 records but only 184 are active. The card cuts through the clutter to the suppliers that actually matter for AP workflow and cash planning.
- 412 dormant vendors are the cleanup opportunity. They are not blocked, so they still appear in lookups and pose a duplicate-payment and master-data hygiene risk. Many merchants block or archive these on a quarterly review.
- 27 blocked vendors are correctly excluded. A vendor blocked for invoicing cannot transact, so it is not active by definition even if it was busy last year.
- No alert on this card. It is a context metric, not a threshold pulse. The value comes from pairing it with on-time payment and AP aging to read supplier-relationship health.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Active Vendors is the denominator for most AP health questions. Pair it with the payment-discipline and aging set.| Card | Why pair |
|---|---|
| Vendor Payment On-Time Rate | The quality metric on the same supplier base this card counts. |
| AP Aging ≥ 60+ Days | Tells you how much of what you owe these active vendors is badly overdue. |
| Active Customers | The mirror metric on the sell side, same active-versus-master logic. |
| Journals by Source Module | Confirms how much ledger activity flows from the AP / purchasing module. |
Reconciling against Microsoft Dynamics 365
Where to look in Business Central / Finance & Operations:BC: Purchasing > Vendors (filter Blocked = blank, then cross-check against Vendor Ledger Entries for recency) BC: Reports > Purchasing > Vendor - Top List / Vendor Ledger (recent activity view) F&O: Accounts payable > Vendors > All vendors (filter on Hold = No, then join to recent vendor transactions) F&O: Accounts payable > Inquiries and reports > Vendor transactions (the activity trail)The raw vendor list in BC or F&O will always show a larger number than this card because the native list defaults to every record. To approximate the card, filter to non-blocked vendors and constrain to those with a vendor ledger entry inside the same lookback window. Why our number may legitimately differ:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Activity window definition | Either | The card uses a recent-activity lookback to define “active”. A native vendor list with no recency filter shows everything and reads higher. |
| Blocking-status nuance | Either | F&O distinguishes hold types (invoicing, payment, all, requisition). The card treats transaction-blocking holds as inactive; a partial hold may be classed differently in your field map. |
| Multi-company duplicates | Card higher | The same supplier set up in several legal entities counts per entity unless de-duplicated. |
| One-time vendors | Either | One-time vendor records used for ad-hoc spend may or may not be in scope depending on configuration. |
| OData / Dataverse sync lag | Card up to 15 min behind | New vendor activity posts in D365 first and appears on the card shortly after. |