Why I can't delete a supplier
Stash blocks supplier deletion when the supplier is still in use somewhere. This is a safety feature — deleting a supplier that's connected to live data would break inventory items, purchase orders, and your audit trail.
If deletion is blocked, you'll see a message telling you exactly what's still using the supplier. Here's how to fix each case.
Who can do this
Both Admins and Members can delete suppliers — but only if the supplier isn't blocking on any of the conditions below.
The two reasons deletion is blocked
1. The supplier is assigned to one or more inventory items
If any item has this supplier set as its primary or secondary supplier, you'll see:
Cannot delete supplier: currently assigned to X item(s). Please remove the supplier from all items first.
How to fix it:
Go to the supplier's detail page — there's a list of items assigned to them.
For each item, open it and either:
Replace the supplier with a different one, or
Remove the supplier (leave it blank).
Once no items reference the supplier, deletion will work.
Tip: use bulk edit on the inventory list (filtered to items from this supplier) to update many at once. See Editing or deleting an inventory item.
2. The supplier has non-draft purchase orders
If you've ever sent the supplier a purchase order that wasn't immediately cancelled, you'll see:
Cannot delete supplier: has X purchase order(s) that are not in draft status.
This includes POs in any of these statuses: ordered, partially received, received, closed. Cancelled POs are also preserved (they don't block deletion in older versions, but they're kept for audit either way). See Understanding PO statuses.
This one you can't fully fix. Stash deliberately doesn't let you delete a supplier with PO history because it would break the audit trail and historical reports. Your options:
Don't delete it — leave the supplier in your list, just stop using it. You can rename it (e.g., [Inactive] Premium Coffee Co.) or move it to the bottom of the list.
Delete only draft POs — if all your POs are still drafts, delete those drafts first, then delete the supplier.
Why Stash works this way
Inventory data is financial data. Deleting a supplier that has linked purchase orders would orphan those POs and make audits, tax filings, and historical reporting unreliable. Keeping inactive suppliers visible (just unused) is the standard way to handle this in any inventory or accounting system.
Workaround: archiving instead of deleting
Stash doesn't yet have an "archive" status for suppliers. Until it does, the cleanest workaround is to:
Rename the supplier to start with zzz — or [Inactive] so it sorts to the bottom.
Remove it as the primary supplier from all items.
Leave it untouched.
This keeps your historical PO data intact while keeping your active supplier list clean.
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