Trying to share common contacts between vendor and customer

Hi there

The company I'm doing an implementation for has outlets to whom it sells goods and services. It also pays out rebate on some of those sales, retaining a part for itself. This is a major revenue stream. This means that an outlet can be both a creditor and a debtor. In order to do this, I've set up a customer and a vendor for each. Obviously the key contact on both customer and vendor for an outlet is the same person.

The same issue holds true for suppliers who again, have both a customer and vendor account.

What I'd like to do in each of these instances is to avoid duplicate contacts. Is there a way in which I can link the same contact record to both a customer and a vendor account?

Thanks in advance!