Vendors

What this does

Vendors → Vendors is everyone you pay: parts suppliers, the landlord, the utility, the insurance company. A vendor record carries contact and remit-to details, a type, payment defaults, and the 1099 flag, and every bill, check, card charge, and purchase order points at one. The inbox and the document reader also match payees to vendors, so a well-kept list is what makes automatic categorizing work.

Before you start

vendor.create and vendor.edit (Owner and General Manager) to add and change; deleting is Owner only. The Accountant role can view the list.

Steps

Add Vendor. Company Name is required. Vendor Type (parts supplier, service provider, utility, marketing, financial, equipment, rental, government, dealership) drives spend reporting. Default Payment Method (Cash, Check, Credit Card, On Account) pre-fills the payment screens. Payment Terms (days) sets the due date on new bills. Contact Name, Email, Phone, Website, the address fields, Tax ID, and Notes are optional. 1099 Vendor marks a contractor you'll need to report.

Edit from the list or the vendor's page. Active off hides a vendor from pickers without touching history. Delete removes the record; the database refuses it while bills or transactions still point at the vendor, so for a vendor with history, deactivate instead.

The vendor page (click the name) is the 360 view: contact and remit-to, an Intelligence card with spend, open AP, last activity, and any blank master fields, then tabs for Bills (every bill with status and balance), Documents (receipts and statements filed against the vendor), open credits, purchase orders, and statements.

Three review tools sit at the top of the list:

Type vendors lists every vendor still Uncategorized with a suggested type, pre-checked where the suggestion is confident. Apply in bulk; rows with no suggestion stay unchecked so nothing gets stamped by default.

1099 review lists, per Tax year, every vendor paid $600 or more by cash or check (card payments are excluded, as the IRS rules require) with the total, whether it's flagged 1099, and whether a Tax ID is on file. Record Tax ID captures it in place.

Review duplicates clusters vendors that look like the same company (NAPA vs NAPA Auto Parts). Pick the survivor, tick the records to fold into it, and Merge: every bill, payment, and document is repointed to the survivor, and the survivor gains any flag or field it was missing. Not duplicates? dismisses a cluster so it stops appearing. Match strictness widens or narrows what counts as similar.

What happens in the books

Nothing. Vendors are reference data; merging repoints records but posts no entry.

Common problems

Two vendor records keep getting bills. Merge them. Until then, payee rules and the document reader will keep picking whichever name matched the receipt text.

A vendor doesn't show in the picker. It's inactive. Edit it and turn Active on.

The 1099 total looks low. It counts cash and check payments recorded against the vendor for the year; card payments don't count, and a check written with no vendor selected isn't attributed to anyone.