Missing W-9s discovered in January
Chasing paperwork from a sub you last worked with in April is a slow way to spend the first week of the year.
Service
Subcontractor Bookkeeping & 1099 Tracking
Know what you paid every sub, on which job, without a January scramble.
Subcontractors are usually the largest single line in a contractor's costs and the least organized. Payments go out by check, card, and transfer. W-9s live in a text thread. Then January arrives and somebody has to reconstruct a year of payments from bank statements.
We keep subcontractor records current through the year: each sub set up properly as a vendor, W-9 status tracked, payments coded by vendor and by job, so the year-end reporting package is a report you print rather than a project you dread.
The problem
What this usually looks like.
The same sub entered three ways
A person, a business name, and a nickname all in the vendor list means the year-to-date total is wrong in three places.
Payments not tied to jobs
You know the total paid to a sub, but not which job carried it, so job margin stays incomplete.
Reimbursements and materials mixed in
Not everything paid to a vendor is reportable in the same way, and sorting it after the fact is guesswork.
What Crew Bookkeeping does
Set up subs properly as vendors
One clean vendor record per sub, with W-9 details captured and duplicates merged.
Track W-9 status continuously
A running list of who is on file and who is missing, so requests happen when the sub is still working for you.
Code payments by vendor and job
Every sub payment carries both the vendor and the job, feeding both 1099 totals and job costing.
Prepare the year-end support package
Organized year-to-date payment totals and W-9 details, ready for whoever prepares and files your 1099-NEC forms.
Who it's for
- General contractors who run most work through subs
- Trades that pull in specialty subs seasonally
- Anyone who spent last January rebuilding payment history
- Contractors whose tax preparer has asked for cleaner vendor records
What you get
- Cleaned and deduplicated vendor list
- W-9 status tracking by subcontractor
- Year-to-date payments by sub and by job
- Year-end 1099-NEC support package for your tax preparer
Trades that use this most
Related guides
Subcontractors
Subcontractor 1099s: a year-round checklist for contractors
The January 1099 scramble is a bookkeeping problem disguised as a tax problem. Fix it in the order you pay people, not at year end.
Cleanup
Getting contractor books clean before tax season
Most of what your tax preparer bills you for at year end is cleanup they should not have had to do. Here is the sequence to fix it yourself.
Find out what your jobs are really earning.
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