Vendors

The vendor master - add payees, see what you have paid them, keep 1099 paperwork straight, and merge duplicate records

Vendors

The Vendors tab is the list of everyone you pay. It sits between Payables and Service Contracts in the Accounting tab bar, and it is where a payee record gets created, edited, retired, and merged.

A vendor is anyone you pay: a supplier, a subcontractor, a parts house, a landlord. Adding one here lets you enter their bills, pay them, and report their 1099 at year end. Contacts are people you talk to; vendors are people you owe.

Two screens say Vendors

The Payables tab has a Vendors tab of its own with a short vendor list on it. This page is the full vendor master: it carries the money columns, the tax-paperwork filters, the tool for turning a contact into a payee, and merging. The bill-entry side is on Payables.

What the list shows

Open Accounting > Vendors. There are twelve tabs now and they do not all fit at once, so on a narrower screen the tab row scrolls sideways. If you cannot see Vendors, scroll the row right from Payables.

The header reads "Vendors" with the number of vendors under it. Add from contacts and New vendor sit in the top right, on the roles that can use them. On a narrower window, Add from contacts is under More.

Column	What it holds
Vendor	The display name, with an Inactive badge on retired payees. Underneath it, the city and state, or the payment terms when there is no city or state on file.
Contact	Email and phone. This column is hidden on narrow screens.
Tax	The 1099 badges. See Tax badges.
Paid, followed by the year	What you have paid this vendor on bills dated in that year.
Open	What you still owe, with the number of open bills under it. A dash means nothing is outstanding.

Click a vendor name, or the Open button on its row, to see the full record.

The money comes from your bills

Paid and Open are worked out from the bills themselves every time the list loads, not from a stored running total. Paid counts bills whose bill date falls in that year. Open adds up the balance still due. Voided bills are left out of both.

Finding a vendor

Type a name, email, or phone number in Search vendors by name, email or phone and press Enter. The search runs when you submit it, so typing does not fire a request on every keystroke. It matches the vendor display name, the business name, the email, the phone, and the contact person's name.

Two dropdowns sit beside the search box, and both apply the moment you change them:

Vendor status - Active (the default), Inactive, or All.
Tax filter - All vendors, 1099 eligible, Missing W-9, or Missing taxpayer ID.

The two tax-gap filters only look at 1099 vendors

Missing W-9 and Missing taxpayer ID both return vendors you have marked as getting a 1099. A supplier with no W-9 on file who is not marked 1099 eligible will not appear in either list. If you are chasing paperwork before year end, check the This vendor gets a 1099 box first, then filter.

The list shows 50 vendors a page, with Previous and Next underneath when there is more than one page. The refresh button beside the filters reloads the current view.

Tax badges

The badges in the Tax column only appear on vendors marked as getting a 1099. A vendor with no 1099 flag shows nothing here, whatever paperwork you hold.

Badge	Meaning
1099	This vendor is marked as getting a 1099.
W-9	A W-9 is recorded.
No W-9	No W-9 is recorded.
No TIN	No taxpayer ID is stored.
Last four digits	The stored taxpayer ID, masked to its last four digits.

The two notices

Two banners can appear above the table.

The first counts 1099 vendors with paperwork missing: how many have no taxpayer ID, and how many have no W-9. Both counts describe the rows currently loaded, not your whole vendor list. Page through, or filter by Missing taxpayer ID, to see the rest.

The second counts contacts marked as vendors that have no payee record yet, so no bill can be entered against them. Review them opens the same picker as Add from contacts.

Add a vendor

Click New vendor.
Enter a Display name. This is the only required field. Saving without one shows "A display name is required" inside the dialog.
Add a Business name if it differs. Left blank, it is set to the display name.
Fill in Email, Phone, Business type (Sole proprietor, Partnership, LLC, S corporation, C corporation, or Other), and Payment method (Check, ACH, Wire, Cash, or Credit card).
Set a Default expense account if this vendor's bills usually go to the same account. Type the account number or the account name as it appears in your chart of accounts. A value that matches no active account is not saved.
For a contractor, check This vendor gets a 1099 and enter the Taxpayer ID (SSN or EIN).
Click Save vendor.

Creating a vendor here writes the contact record and the payee record together, so the vendor also appears in Contacts.

A taxpayer ID goes in once

The number is stored encrypted, and only its last four digits are ever shown again. When you edit a vendor later, leaving the field blank keeps the number already on file rather than clearing it.

Edit a vendor

Click the vendor name or Open to edit the record. Changes apply to bills entered from then on, so correcting a payment term does not rewrite bills already in the books.

If your role can see accounting but not manage vendors, the same dialog opens read only. The footer says so, and the only button is Done.

Add a vendor from contacts

A QuickBooks import, or years of ordinary use, leaves contacts flagged as vendors that have no payee record. Nothing can be billed against them until they get one.

Click Add from contacts. The picker is titled "Add a vendor from contacts".
It lists contacts marked as vendors that have no payee record. Search by name, email, or phone.
To reach a contact that was never flagged, check Search every contact, not just the ones marked as vendors. A contact who is also a customer carries an Also a customer badge.
Click Make a vendor on the row.

Promoting a contact leaves the customer flag alone, so a company you both bill and pay stays both. If the contact already has a payee record you get "This contact is already a vendor" instead of a duplicate, and that includes a payee you have deactivated: reactivate it from the list rather than promoting the contact again. A payee record that was merged away is revived rather than duplicated, which keeps the history that pointed at it.

Retire a vendor

Vendors are never deleted. Use Deactivate on the row, and the vendor drops out of the default Active view. Reactivate puts it back.

Deactivating only retires the payee record. The contact stays exactly as it was, because someone you have stopped buying from may still be on projects and work orders.

Merge duplicate vendors

Two records for the same payee split their history: half the bills on one, half on the other, and a 1099 that is wrong on both. Merging joins them.

A merge cannot be undone

There is no undo. The review screen exists so you can read exactly what moves before you commit it, and the counts on it are the counts the merge performs.

Click Merge on the row of the vendor you want to get rid of. The button is only on active vendors.
Search Search vendors to keep, then pick the survivor from Choose the vendor to keep. Candidates are fetched from your whole vendor list, not just the page you are looking at, so a duplicate pair that sits on different pages is still reachable.
Read the review screen. It names both sides, then lists what would move.
Read the warnings, which sit under the table. See The warnings and what they mean.
Decide whether to take anything from the record being merged away. See What you can take across.
Check the confirmation box, which spells out that the other vendor stops being a vendor and its records move.
Click Merge vendors.

Afterwards a message reports how many records now point at the vendor you kept, plus anything the merge declined to do.

What moves

The review table lists nine kinds of record in two groups.

Record	How it is linked
Bills, Recurring bills, Vendor credits, Documents (W-9s, certificates of insurance and other files)	Linked to the vendor record
Job cost entries, Equipment costs, Work order materials, Purchase orders, Purchase order drafts	Vendor name stored as text, rewritten

The first group is repointed at the vendor you keep. The second group has no link to repoint: those records hold the vendor's name as plain text, so the merge rewrites that text to the name the merged vendor ends up with. That rewrite cannot be put back, and the review screen counts it so the number is in front of you first.

What you can take across

By default the vendor you keep stays exactly as it is and only the records move. Four checkboxes let you take details from the record being merged away instead.

Group	What it covers
Name and contact details	Display name, business name, email, phone, and address.
Tax details	Taxpayer ID, W-9 record, and 1099 eligibility.
Payment defaults	Payment terms, expense account, payment method, and business type.
Notes	Replaces the notes on the vendor you keep.

Two rules apply to the stored details in all four groups. A blank on the record being merged away never erases a value on the vendor you keep. A value does replace one.

The 1099 checkbox is the one exception, because it is a setting rather than a record. Taking Tax details always copies it across. If the vendor you keep is marked for a 1099 and the one being merged away is not, taking Tax details turns that marking off, and the review screen does not warn you about that direction. Check the 1099 row on both cards before you tick it.

Ticking or unticking a group re-counts the whole preview, because taking the name changes which records get their text rewritten. Wait for the new counts before you confirm.

Taking the tax details decides which number the 1099 goes out under

When both records carry a taxpayer ID, taking Tax details replaces the one on the vendor you keep. The review screen says so, and shows the last four digits of both. Check which one is right before you tick it.

The warnings and what they mean

The review screen raises these on the pairs it applies to.

Warning	What to do
Both vendors have a bill with the same number	Nothing is blocked. Both bills are kept, but entering that number again afterwards is refused as a duplicate.
Only the vendor being merged has a taxpayer ID	Take Tax details, or the 1099 goes out with no number on it.
Both vendors have a taxpayer ID	Decide which is correct. Taking Tax details replaces the one on the vendor you keep.
Only the vendor being merged has a W-9, or both do	Same choice, for the W-9 record.
The vendor being merged is 1099 eligible and the one you are keeping is not	Its payments drop off the 1099 report unless you take Tax details.
The vendor being merged has an open balance	It moves to the vendor you keep.
Records name the vendor as free text	That text is rewritten and cannot be put back.

After the merge, two more notes can appear: the taxpayer ID or W-9 already on file was kept because the other record did not have one, and a year-to-date payment figure was not carried over because the two records count different years.

The vendor merged away stops being a vendor, and its contact record survives, because a company merged out of your payee list may still be on projects and work orders.

Who can do what

Accounting roles are set under Accounting > Settings, in User Roles.

Task	Roles
Open the vendor list	Accounting Admin, Accounting User, Accounting Viewer, Accountant
Add, edit, deactivate, reactivate, promote a contact	Accounting Admin, Accounting User
Merge vendors	Accounting Admin

Merging is the one vendor operation with no undo, so it is held to the role that owns the books rather than everyone who can add a payee. Roles that cannot do a thing are not shown the button for it.

Payables - bills, payments, vendor credits, and 1099 tracking
Form 1099-NEC - the year-end filing tool
Accounting - the rest of the module