Managing Vendors and Their Documents

What this page is for

**Vendors** is your own address book of subcontractors and suppliers, plus the place you keep their insurance certificate, W-9 and licence number. It is where the app learns who you are working with, so it can warn you before you pay someone whose insurance is missing or out of date.

Your vendor list belongs to **you, not to a project**. Every project you own reads from the same directory.

What do I do next?

| What you see | What to do next |
|---|---|
| *No vendors yet. Add your first vendor to get started.* | Select **New Vendor**, type the **Company Name**, and save. |
| A red **⚠️ N vendors not compliant — Review before paying!** banner | Open each highlighted row and add the missing insurance or W-9 before you pay them. |
| **Expired** badge on a row | Do not pay that vendor. Get a current certificate, upload it, and update **Insurance Expiry**. |
| **Missing Info** badge | Either the certificate or its expiry date is absent. Add both. |
| *Not on file* under Insurance Status | Upload the certificate on the **Details** tab, or use **Request Insurance Docs** on the **Compliance** tab. |
| **Expires in 20 days** | Ask for the renewal now, before it lapses mid-job. |
| A vendor who will never need documents (a big-box supplier) | Open them and switch on **No W-9 / insurance required**. |
| A vendor you no longer use | Open them and archive the record. **Show Archived** brings it back with **Restore**. |
| Your dashboard warns about a vendor you thought was fine | The dashboard only counts vendors attached to that project — see *Directory versus project* below. |

Creating, finding and editing a vendor

**New Vendor** opens the vendor record. Only **Company Name** is required; everything else can be filled in later. **Save** confirms with a short message, and a failed save tells you plainly and writes nothing.

To find someone, scan the directory list — it is sorted by company name. Selecting any row (or card, on a phone) reopens the same record for editing. The heading counts what you are looking at: **Vendor Directory (12)** or **Archived Vendors (3)**.

The record has three tabs: **Details**, **Compliance** and **SOPs**.

Details

  • **Company Name** (required), **Contact Name**, **Phone**, **Email**
  • **Trade Role** — one choice from a fixed list: General Contractor, Plumber, Electrician, HVAC Technician, Framer, Roofer, Mason, Painter, Flooring Installer, Drywall Installer, Insulation Contractor, Landscaper, Concrete Contractor, Inspector, Surveyor
  • **Website**, **Mailing Address** (street, city, state, ZIP)
  • **Secondary Contact** — name, phone and email for a second person at the company
  • **License Number** and **Insurance Expiry**
  • **No W-9 / insurance required** — the exemption switch
  • **Insurance Certificate** and **W-9 Document** uploads

Compliance

Two cards, **Insurance Certificate** and **W-9 Form**, each showing **On File**, **Requested** or **Missing**, with the expiry date and the date you last asked. **Request Insurance Docs** and **Request W-9 Form** email the vendor asking for the document; the buttons then read **Resend Insurance Request** and **Resend W-9 Request**. These need a saved email address — without one the card says to add the email on the Details tab and save first.

SOPs

Your own written expectations for this vendor — how you want the work done, site rules, what you require before you pay. Notes for your benefit; they change nothing elsewhere.

Archiving

Archiving hides a vendor from the directory without deleting anything, so old expenses and documents stay intact. **Show Archived** lists them, and **Restore** brings one back. There is no permanent delete on this page.

Directory versus a particular project

This distinction matters, because it decides which warnings you see:

  • **In your directory** — anyone you have entered. Being here does not attach them to a project, and does not by itself produce project warnings.
  • **Attached to a project** — a vendor becomes part of a project when you **assign them to one of its budget lines** (on **Budget**, using the assign-vendors control on a line) or when an **expense on that project is linked to their vendor record**.

So the compliance banner on this page covers your **whole directory**, while **Risk Alerts** and the health score on a project dashboard only count vendors genuinely attached to that project. Contractors who bid and lost, directory-only suppliers, archived records and exempt vendors are ignored there. A vendor name typed onto an old expense without picking the record is never matched by name — relink that expense if you want the vendor tracked.

*Professional builders:* one vendor can be assigned to several budget lines, and pushing an accepted bid to the budget from inside a trade setup screen assigns the vendor to the lines it paid for, provided the bid was tied to a directory record.

Contact information, and where it is used

  • **Email** is used by **Request Insurance Docs** and **Request W-9 Form** on the Compliance tab.
  • **Phone**, **Website**, **Mailing Address** and **Secondary Contact** are reference only — nothing sends to them.
  • Sending a bid package from **Trades & Bids** asks for the email each time and stores it on the bid, separately from this record.
  • Lien waiver emails ask for **Vendor email (optional)** in the waiver panel. That field is **not** filled in from this vendor record — it only remembers the address used on an earlier waiver for the same work. Expect to type it, and check it before sending.

Documents, dates and what they actually establish

Uploads accept a **PDF or image up to 5MB**, one file each for the insurance certificate and the W-9. A stored file shows as a link you can open, with an option to remove it and upload a replacement.

Insurance Status is worked out from two things only — whether a certificate file exists, and the **Insurance Expiry** date you typed:

| Shown | Means |
|---|---|
| **Valid until 12 Mar 2027** | A file exists and the date you entered is more than 30 days away |
| **Expires in 18 days** | A file exists and your date is within 30 days |
| **Expired** | Your date has passed |
| **Not on file** / **Missing Info** | The file or the date is absent |
| **Not required** / **N/A** | The vendor is switched to **No W-9 / insurance required** |

Be clear about what this proves. OwnerDraw stores the file you upload and the date you type. It does **not** read the certificate, contact the insurer, check policy limits, confirm workers' compensation, or verify a licence with any authority. **On File** means a file is attached — not that coverage is adequate or genuine. Read the certificate yourself, confirm it names the right policy dates and limits, and where it matters ask the insurer or your own agent. The W-9 is likewise stored, not validated.

Two practical notes. The expiry date is typed by hand, so a stale date makes a lapsed policy look valid — put a to-do in for renewals. And your files stay private: nothing is published to the open web. When you select **View Insurance Document** or **View W-9 Document**, OwnerDraw fetches a fresh, short-lived private link at that moment, so opening a file works just as well years later as it does today. If a file genuinely cannot be found — or an older record no longer says clearly which file it pointed to — you get a plain message explaining what is missing instead of a broken link, and only then does the file need uploading again.

Empty states, saving and who can do this

  • Empty directory: *No vendors yet. Add your first vendor to get started.* Empty archive: *No archived vendors.*
  • Sample vendors appear only while the demo project is selected.
  • On a phone the directory becomes cards with the same badges and a **Restore** button in the archive view; the record opens as a full-height sheet with the same three tabs.
  • Saving, uploading and requesting each confirm with a short message and report failures plainly.
  • Client-role users do not have this page. Project members other than the owner can see project pages, but the vendor directory belongs to the account that created it.

Related guides

  • *How to Use the Budget Page* — assigning a vendor to a budget line.
  • *How to Record and Manage Expenses* — linking a payment to a vendor record.
  • *Lien Waivers in OwnerDraw: What to Send and When* — what to collect with each payment.
  • *Collecting and Comparing Contractor Bids* — turning a quote into an agreed price.
  • *Understanding Your Project Dashboard* — how vendor warnings reach the dashboard.