Setup and Edit Vendors in QuickBooks 2019

Watch QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial. In this lesson, we will talk about working with vendors. We will show you how to set up and edit vendors in the vendor center.

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We are all the way down now to module five. In this module, we’re going to talk about working with vendors.

We spent a lot of time in module four talking about working with customers. That was your accounts receivable part of QuickBooks.

No, I want to talk a little bit about the accounts payable part of QuickBooks. This would be where you track all the bills that you owe. Where you pay the bills if you have credit memos from the vendors. Things like that!

We are going to go ahead and start off section one. I’m going to show you how to set up and work with your vendors.

A vendor is a business or a person that you buy from on a regular basis. When you are purchasing things for your business. The first thing you’ll need to know, how to do is to go ahead and set up those vendors. So that, you can use them when you’re doing different things in QuickBooks.

We’re now going to be looking at this section here. We are going to start with the Vendor Center, which you’re going to get to right here.

Remember, you can also access it this way or if you go up to Vendors on your menu. You can get to the Vendor Center this way.

This is going to be a list of all of the vendors in alphabetical order. You’ll notice with vendors, you don’t have any levels underneath a level as we saw with customers and jobs. They’re all on a straight level like this.

Again, they’re going to be in alphabetical order. So, if you want them in a certain place you’re going to have to type the name in that way. So, it shows up where you want it in this list.

You’ll notice that you also have a column for the balance that you owe that vendor. And also, a column where you can attach a file.

Maybe they sent a bill to you, which would be an invoice on their end. And you want to actually have a copy of that, so you can attach that file here.

If you click on a particular vendor, you’re going to see the information about the vendor; like their name, any terms they have, their address, phone, fax, their email, all the same stuff you would have seen when we talked about the customers.

You have the ability here to attach a file. You can also edit that vendor information right here. There are also some quick reports over here. So if you wanted to run those you could.

Down here at the bottom, you’re going to have your transactions, just like we saw with the customers. Transaction types that you will see with vendors will be bills, bill payment checks. Occasionally, you’ll see credit memos in here.

If you want to look at one of these, you just double click and open it up and you go right to that particular transaction.

You’ve also got your Contacts tab here. These would be any contacts you deal with at that particular vendor’s location. Maybe it’s the partner of that company. It could be the assistant in the office. Who knows? You can also set them up.

Here’s your To Do’s like we talked about. If you have something specific, you need to take care of related to that vendor. You would be able to come down here to the bottom where it says, “Manage To Do’s”, and create a new “To Do“.

Then, you can set up any notes for that vendor here. You would just come to the bottom where it says, “Manage Notes”, and choose Add New. Then, you could type those notes in. And also you can track any sent emails to that particular vendor.

So, everything on this side is exactly how it was with the customers. You’re just looking at vendors this time.

Let’s go ahead and set up a new vendor so you can see the information that you would have to tell QuickBooks when creating that new vendor. If you’ll notice right here, it says, “Add New Vendor”. You can also add multiple vendors. I’ll show you that in a second but let’s add one at a time right now.

The first thing you want to do is put in the name of the vendor. Remember the vendor can be a person or a business. Underneath that, you’ll see a field for the opening balance.

This is designed to put in the balance you owed this vendor as of the start date of your company file. I don’t like to do this! Because, then, I just have a number. And I don’t know that that’s a combination of multiple bills.

I’ll go ahead and put those bills in that I owed as of the start date of my company file instead of the actual opening balance.

You’ll notice now, we’re on the Address Info tab and I’m going to plug in the name of the company again. And I may also have a particular person that I’m dealing with there. I want to plug their name in as well.

I can plug in their job title, phone, fax, email. You see the website, any of the fields where you’d like to plug information in for.

Down under the address details, I’m going to go ahead and type in Attention Bob Chambers in this case. And then, I’m going to put in the actual billing address that they would like things mailed to.

Now, let me show you what’s going to happen if you don’t fill in all of the information. Notice, that I didn’t put in the zip code.

If I go ahead and try to go to the next tab, it’s going to pop up and show me the Edit Address Information window. You can see that it wants the zip code. I’ll put a zip code here. Then, I’ll click OK. Now, it will let me go on to the next tab.

Under the Payment Settings are where I’m going to put in my account number with that particular vendor (if I happen to have one). I can put in the terms that that particular vendor has given me. I can also put in here how they’d like their name printed on checks (if I’m actually mailing them a check).

If they’ve given me a credit limit, I can set that here. I can also set a billing rate level. Now, what this means is that if the particular vendor is going to bill me by the hourly rate, I can put that in here. Or, if they have a flat rate that they charge me for different services, I can plug that in here. Because it might be different depending on what service they happen to be doing for me. I’m going to go ahead and Cancel that.

The tab that’s next is your Tax Settings. This is an important tab I want you to make note of. Remember, I told you way back in the beginning that if you have subcontractors, they have nothing to do with payroll. Absolutely nothing!

They’re considered vendors in QuickBooks. This is how would set them up. You would have to put in their tax ID number and also check that their eligible for a 1099.

You would want to make sure that your subcontractor sends you a bill to pay. They are actually someone you are hiring to do a job so you need to have them send you a bill in case you get audited.

The next tab down is your Account Settings. You can set it up so that when you write a check to this particular vendor that three fields populate automatically from the Chart of Accounts. You don’t have to set this up but you can put in one to three of these to automatically be there when you create a bill.

And the last tab is your Additional Info. You might have different vendor types that you want to set up. You might have custom fields you want to set up for vendors. And again, you would do that by going down to Define Fields and either checking off the ones you already have that you’d like to see for vendors or creating a new one on the next line down.

I’m going to go ahead and cancel that and click OK now you’re going to see my new vendor on the list, Pelican Building Materials right down here.

Now, I do want to show you how to add multiple vendors at the same time. If I click on this option here, you’re going to see that it’s going to pop up and it’s going to show me all of my vendors. And what I can do is, if I have a new one, I can go to the very bottom of the list and I can actually type them in.

That’s pretty much all there is to working with vendors. I’m going to go ahead and close this window.

Let’s go ahead and talk a little bit now about once you have the vendors set up you’re going to want to start entering bills. So let’s go ahead and do that over in section two.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.