Go to Expenses > Vendors, click New vendor, enter their name and contact details, and save. You can also add one on the fly from inside a bill you're entering, without leaving that screen. Here's the full walkthrough, including the 1099 checkbox that's easy to miss the first time around.
1. Open the Vendors list under Expenses. Click New vendor in the top right. (+ New > Vendor under the Vendors column gets you the same form.)
2. Enter their display name and company name. The display name is what shows up everywhere, dropdowns, bills, reports, so make it something you'll recognize months from now, not just this week.
3. Add their contact details and address. Email and address matter more here than they do for a customer record; you'll want them on file if you ever mail a check or need to send a 1099.
4. Enter their tax ID and check Track payments for 1099, if it applies. This is the step people skip and regret in January. If this vendor is a contractor or business you'll likely pay over the 1099 threshold within the year, flip this on now instead of hunting down their tax ID months later.
5. Set default payment terms, if you know them. Net 30, due on receipt, whatever's standard for this vendor. It pre-fills on every bill you enter for them from here on.
6. Save. They're immediately available in the vendor dropdown on bills, expenses, and checks.
Multiple people entering bills means multiple chances to type the same supplier's name a little differently each time, 'ABC Supply' one week, 'ABC Supply Co.' the next, until nobody's sure which record actually has the full history.
The 1099 checkbox causes its own version of this problem on a yearly cycle. It gets missed quietly all year, then shows up as a scramble every January when someone realizes a contractor's tax ID was never captured and now has to be chased down after the fact instead of at the moment the vendor was first added.
A supplier approved in a procurement or project tool creates the matching QuickBooks vendor automatically, with the contact details already filled in, instead of getting retyped from an email or a business card.
Vendor spend gets tracked against the 1099 threshold as bills come in, so nobody finds out in January that a contractor's tracking was never turned on to begin with.
Tell us how vendors get added in your business right now, and we'll tell you whether the duplicates and the missed 1099 setups can be caught automatically.
Tell us how vendors actually get added in your business today, and we'll tell you if the tax ID and tracking checkbox can get caught at creation instead of months later. Vendor setup is one example; n-frames automates whatever's manual in a business, any tool, any process.
Let's talk →Anyone or any business you pay money to that isn't an employee: a supplier, a contractor, a utility company, your landlord. Vendors sit on their own list, separate from customers, and every bill, check, or expense you record against one builds their transaction history.
Open the vendor record, go to the Tax info section, enter their tax ID if it's missing, and check Track payments for 1099. Past bills already entered for them still count toward the threshold; you don't need to re-enter anything, just make sure the tracking is on before year-end reporting.
Completely different actions on an existing record. Adding a vendor creates the record itself; entering a vendor credit, through + New > Vendor credit, records money that vendor owes you back, a return, an overcharge, against a vendor that already exists.
Edit the duplicate's name to match the one you're keeping exactly, then save; QuickBooks detects the match and offers to merge their transaction history into one record. This can't be undone, so double-check which record you're keeping before confirming.