Vendors, Bills, and 1099 Tracking

This guide covers how vendors work in Ambivo, how you pay them with Bills, what the system stores for 1099 reporting, and how a commissioned sales agent automatically becomes a vendor when they earn commission.

What Is a Vendor?

• Vendor — Anyone you pay, as opposed to a customer who pays you. Suppliers, contractors, and commissioned sales agents are all vendors.
• Bill — A payable you owe a vendor. Bills are the accounts-payable counterpart of an invoice.
• 1099 — The US tax form you file for a contractor you paid during the year. Ambivo stores the vendor details a 1099 needs.

A vendor is not a separate record type. A vendor is an Account whose Relationship Type is set to Vendor. Customers, vendors, partners, and prospects all live in the same Accounts list, separated by that one field. A contractor is simply a vendor you file a 1099 for.

Getting There

• Vendors: Switch to CRM, click Accounts, filter by Relationship Type = Vendor
• Bills: Switch to Commerce, open the Finances area to reach Bills and Payments

Manage Vendors

Create a Vendor

1. 1

   Create account

   From Accounts, click + New. Set Relationship Type to Vendor. Enter Name, Type (Individual or Organization), Email, Phone, Address, and Currency if needed. Click Save.

Fill In Tax Details for a Contractor

If you will file a 1099 for this vendor, capture the following from their W-9:

The Tax Identifier is stored as plain text, so set TIN Type so a human can tell SSN and EIN apart later.

Retire a Vendor

Do not delete a vendor you have paid — set status to Inactive instead. If synced to QuickBooks, Ambivo deactivates there too. QuickBooks refuses if the vendor still has an open balance — pay outstanding bills first.

Paying a Vendor

Bills

Payments

Pay a bill with a Payment of type vendor_payment. Supported methods include cash, check, credit/debit card, bank transfer, ACH, wire, Zelle, Stripe, and PayPal. For international vendors, Ambivo integrates with Wise — see Integrations (CRM-015).

Commissioned Agents Become Vendors Automatically

When a sales agent earns commission on an order, you owe them money — which makes them a vendor. Ambivo handles this for you:

• You edit an order and set commission for a salesperson
• A workflow picks up the change
• Ambivo finds or creates the agent's vendor record using name and email from their user profile
• It creates or updates a Bill dated to the order's fulfillment date (not today)
• If QuickBooks is connected, the bill is pushed as a QuickBooks Bill against a commission expense account

What This Means in Practice

• Vendor accounts you did not create manually are expected — tagged auto_created_from: commission_bill
• User record and vendor record are linked by user ID, not name
• Zero out a commission and the bill is retired; remove a salesperson and their commission bill is cancelled
• A paid bill is never rewritten — conflicts are logged for human review
• Delete a user and their vendor is deactivated, never deleted — payment history survives
• If the order has no fulfillment date, Ambivo refuses to book the commission until one is set

1099 Tracking

What Ambivo Does Today

• Stores every field a 1099 needs on the vendor: tax identifier, TIN type, legal name, tax classification, 1099 flag, form type, box, backup-withholding flag, and W-9 status
• Imports Vendor1099 and TaxIdentifier from QuickBooks when you import vendors
• Tracks what you paid each vendor through Bills and Payments

What Ambivo Does Not Do Yet

Best practice: treat Ambivo as the place you capture vendor tax details and track what you paid; file 1099s from QuickBooks or your accountant's system.

QuickBooks and Vendors

QuickBooks requires unique vendor display names across customers, vendors, and employees. Once matched, Ambivo caches the QuickBooks ID. The commission expense account is picked automatically by scanning for an active expense account with "commission" in the name.

Vendor Management (Admin Guide)

There are no /vendor/* routes; a vendor is an Account. Use POST /user/customer/account with relationship_type: vendor to create. List vendors with match_filter_dict: {relationship_type: vendor}. Import from QuickBooks via POST /user/intuit/import_data with entity_list: ["Vendor"].

Bills and Commission Bills

• POST /user/bill/manage — add, update, delete, get, export
• POST /intuit/order/<order_id>/reconcile_commission_bills — idempotent commission bill sync from order workflow
• User → vendor link lives in meta.salesperson_userid on the vendor account

Common Questions

Tips and Best Practices

• Capture the W-9 before the first payment, not at year end
• Keep vendor display names stable — QuickBooks matches on them
• Name your QuickBooks commission account clearly (e.g., Commissions Paid)
• Always set a fulfillment date on orders that carry commission
• Set the 1099 flag in QuickBooks as well as Ambivo
• Deactivate, never delete

Related Guides

• CRM-003 — Accounts Management
• CRM-008 — Orders and Invoices
• CRM-023 — Payments, Subscriptions, and Billing
• CRM-009 — Products and Commissions
• CRM-015 — Integrations