You pull up a fabric sample in a client presentation, and they love it. Now you need to call the showroom, check the current lead time, and get pricing from the rep before tomorrow’s follow-up meeting. The vendor portal login is in a spreadsheet somewhere. Maybe it’s the main Excel file. Maybe your assistant started a separate one. Maybe the password was updated two months ago, and nobody wrote it down in the right place.
This is not a story about disorganization. It is a story about a system that worked for a smaller firm and never got rebuilt when the firm grew. And it plays out in interior design studios every week.
Interior Design Community recently heard this question from a member whose vendor list had grown to the point where Excel, as a database, could no longer keep up. The problem they described was specific: they needed to be able to look at a fabric sample and immediately surface the showroom, the login, and the rep contact. The community’s response pointed to a clear but often-missed insight. Most firms trying to fix their vendor management problem are actually dealing with two separate problems and trying to solve them with one tool.
When Your Vendor List Outgrows the Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet era makes complete sense at the start. When you have fifteen or twenty vendors and one person managing the studio, an Excel file does the job. You know where the tab is. You know what the columns mean. If you forget your login, you can scroll to find it.
The problems begin when the list crosses a certain size, the team grows by even one person, and the kinds of questions change. It is no longer “what is our login for Kravet?” It becomes: “I have a sample from a vendor we ordered through a showroom rep last year, I need to know which showroom, I need the rep’s current number, I need to confirm we have an active trade account, and I need to log into their portal to get pricing before our client presentation at two.”
That question is not an Excel question. That is a discovery question paired with an access question, and a spreadsheet cannot do either well under pressure.
If you are still working out which database platform makes sense for your practice, the IDC guide to project management tools for interior designers covers how designers are comparing their options.
The distinction matters because it changes which tools you reach for. Fixing your vendor management system does not mean finding a better spreadsheet. It means building two systems, not one.
Two Problems Inside One Vendor List
Before choosing any tool, it helps to clearly name the two problems.
The first is vendor information and discovery: the ability to search your vendor list by product category, filter by showroom location, pull up a rep’s name and direct line, and understand what your trade relationship with that vendor actually covers. This is the operational layer. It is how your team functions during sourcing and procurement without having to ask you every question.
The second is credential storage and access control: keeping usernames and passwords in a place where the right people can access them without you acting as the relay, and maintaining control over who has access and revoking it when someone leaves.
@gen.decor.academy put the first problem into sharp focus:
“Excel is great for data, but it’s terrible for ‘discovery.’ We’ve found that moving to a project management tool like MyDoma or Studio Designer allows you to link specific fabric samples or lead times directly to a project. It turns a static list into a functional resource. If you’re not ready for a full ERP yet, even a shared Airtable with attachments for rep business cards is a massive step up from a spreadsheet.”
— @gen.decor.academy
The word “discovery” is the right frame. Your vendor database has to be there in the moment of need, when someone on your team has a specific sourcing question and needs to find the answer quickly without calling you. That is a search-and-filter problem, not a storage problem, and spreadsheets solve the wrong one.
Building a Vendor Library Your Team Can Actually Use
For the vendor information side of the equation, design-specific platforms have a real advantage. MyDoma and Studio Designer build vendor management directly into the project workflow. When a vendor is tied to a project, the relevant contacts, pricing notes, and rep information travel with it. More importantly, both platforms allow tagging and categorization that support the kind of filtered search an Excel file cannot replicate.
@thornton_interiordesign described how this works in a functioning studio:
“We keep our vendor library in MyDoma so that we all have access to logins and passwords… We also can add rep contact info, pricing information, etc. Extremely helpful! We also tag each vendor for what they sell… so when looking for something specific, we can filter through our sources quickly.”
— @thornton_interiordesign
The tagging piece deserves attention. When a junior designer can filter by product category and surface the right vendors without calling you, your firm has scaled its sourcing knowledge. That is an operational improvement that compounds over time.
For firms not on a dedicated design platform, Airtable has emerged as a strong alternative. It is flexible enough to build a custom vendor database with fields for showroom, rep name, direct phone, trade account status, product categories, and notes. It supports attachments, so pricing sheets and account documents can live alongside the vendor record. And it is shareable across a team without requiring everyone to be on the same project management system.
@jtwdesignllc described their setup:
“Airtable with all vendor data to include pricing sheets, our sales info and tax info.”
— @jtwdesignllc
For Studio Designer users, there is also a built-in option worth using: the platform includes username and password fields directly in the vendor record. That does not replace a full credential management system, but it does keep login details attached to the vendor profile rather than floating in a separate document.
For a closer look at building a trade vendor list that protects your timelines and margins, Stop Guessing, Start Sourcing covers how designers make their vendor list a functional business asset.
The Security Problem Nobody Wants to Think About Until It Is Too Late
The credential side of vendor management carries a different kind of risk, and the community was direct about it.
@mimiandhill shared a situation that should be a wake-up call for any firm storing logins in a shared spreadsheet:
“We just went through having an ex employee access our logins and try to open independent accounts. Lock it down!”
— @mimiandhill
When passwords live in a spreadsheet or a shared Google Doc, there is no audit trail, no access revocation, and no way to know who has what. When a team member leaves, your trade account credentials leave with them in their memory and possibly in their personal files. That is not a hypothetical risk. It is a common one.
Password managers exist specifically to fix this. Several came up in the community conversation: Dashlane Business, LastPass, 1Password, and Proton Pass were all mentioned by name. They share a core set of features that matter for design firms: encrypted credential storage, team access without exposing the password itself, and the ability to revoke access immediately when someone’s employment ends.
@blacksheepid described the team functionality clearly:
“LastPass! It’s fantastic. Works on any device and if you’ve got a team, you can set it so they’re automatically logged in without seeing passwords. And if someone leaves the team, you can just end their id’s access remotely. Additionally it’s double blind, so the provider is also unable to see your passwords.”
— @blacksheepid
The ability to log in without seeing the password is an underrated feature for design firms. Your team accesses vendor portals without ever possessing the credentials in a form they can copy or carry. Access is functional, not portable.
There is one real complication that surfaced in the conversation and is worth taking seriously: two-factor authentication. As more vendor portals have added 2FA requirements, the assumption that a team member can log in independently has become more difficult to sustain. @statestreetblindsanddesign described the operational friction:
“We have our stored in our vendor notes and QuickBooks but now the bigger issue for us is several of our vendors have gone to two-factor authentication which means that if one of our staff members logs in I still have to be available to send them the Code before it expires … this has been difficult for us if I’m in meetings or traveling and I can’t get to it right away but one of my teammates needs to log into something right away and they cannot access the vendor site.”
— @statestreetblindsanddesign
Password managers do not fully solve the 2FA problem. Some firms are addressing this by registering a firm-owned phone number or authenticator app for vendor portal 2FA codes, so the second factor is tied to the business rather than an individual employee’s personal device. It is worth thinking through your 2FA approach at the same time you set up credential storage, not six months later when the problem surfaces in the middle of a project.
A System That Grows With Your Practice
The practical path forward treats this as two separate decisions made in parallel, not one problem to fix with a single tool.
For vendor information, decide where your library lives. If you are on MyDoma or Studio Designer, the vendor database is already built in, and the question is whether you are using it fully: tagging by product type, filling in rep contact fields, and keeping notes on each relationship. If you are not on a platform, a shared Airtable database is a strong choice. Building it takes time, but once it is set up, it becomes institutional knowledge that belongs to the firm, not any individual.
For credentials, a business password manager is the right tool for nearly every firm with more than one person who needs to access vendor portals. The specific product matters less than whether you are actually using one consistently. Dashlane Business, 1Password, LastPass, and Proton Pass all offer team plans with shared vaults, granular access controls, and audit logs.
When both systems are in place, your onboarding and offboarding process becomes cleaner. A new team member gets access to the vendor database and the credential vault on day one. When someone leaves, you revoke vault access and update any credentials they had direct knowledge of. The trade relationships and the vendor knowledge stay with the firm. For a broader look at protecting institutional knowledge when your team changes, IDC’s guide to onboarding interior design team members covers what that handoff looks like in practice.
Interior design is a business with a long vendor tail: dozens of trade accounts, showroom relationships, rep contacts, and login credentials that take years to build and are genuinely difficult to reconstruct if lost. A spreadsheet got you to this point. A purpose-built system is what takes you further without the vendor scrambles and access gaps that slow firms down as they scale.
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