Vendors & Contractors
Working the Vendors & Contractors step of a payroll run
Vendors & Contractors is the second step of a payroll run — where you pay the companies and individuals your production owes for goods and services, outside of staff payroll. It uses the same table and row layout as Employees & Loan-outs; this page covers what's different for vendors and contractors.
How payees get here
Vendors and contractors join a run the same way employees do — automatically, based on eligibility. See How a run gets built. If a vendor or contractor you expect isn't showing up, check the not-ready panel above the table first (it names the specific gap — usually onboarding or a document), and note the caveat there about brand-new vendors with no rate and no payment history yet.
There are no tabs on this step for Vendors vs. Contractors vs. anything else — it's one list, groupable by All / Department / Union the same as Employees & Loan-outs.
Quick-add A/P
There's one exception to "no add dialog", and it's on this step only: a Quick-add A/P button next to the search box. It exists for the invoice that turns up while you're already building the run — a rental company you've never paid before, billing once.
It creates the vendor and their payment in one action:
| Field | Required |
|---|---|
| Vendor name | Yes |
| Yes | |
| Address, City, State, ZIP | Yes — "a payment needs somewhere to go" |
| W-9 not required | Ticked by default; untick it if this vendor is 1099-reportable |
| Amount | Yes, greater than zero |
| GL code, Memo | Optional |
| Attach invoice | Optional — see below |
Quick-add either produces a payable vendor or refuses
A vendor who lands on the run but isn't fully set up would appear twice on this screen — once as a payable row, once in the "not ready to join this run" panel. So the frame asks the same setup gate the normal approval path asks, before it writes anything, and refuses outright if the answer would be no. That's why the address is mandatory here when it isn't at Adding Payees, and why W-9 not required defaults to ticked: those are the fields that empty a vendor's outstanding-document set. Untick it and the vendor needs a signed W-9 before they can be paid — which is correct, and means quick-add won't complete for them.
Once created, the vendor is an ordinary payee on your roster with an ordinary record. Quick-add is a shortcut for the first payment, not a different kind of vendor.
If the run is submitted in the moment between the vendor being created and the payment being written, quick-add says exactly that: "[Vendor] was created, but the run was submitted before the payment could be added. Pay them from the next run — the vendor is ready on the Payees page." The vendor record is real and payable; only this run was closed to it.
Entering this week's payment
Most vendors and contractors bill per invoice rather than carry a standing weekly rate, so their row's rate area reads "one-time payments" instead of showing a rate dropdown. To enter what you owe them this week:
- Expand their row.
- In the Contract pay box, click Add.
- Enter a description (for example, "Costume rental — week 14"), and an amount.
- If the payee's role can file either way, choose 1099-NEC or 1099-MISC for that payment; otherwise Greenroom applies the correct bucket automatically and just tells you which.
That's the payment line for the week — there isn't a separate "vendor payment" form. The same Allowances & reimbursements and Deductions boxes described in Adding Employees are also available here for one-off reimbursements or withholdings tied to a vendor or contractor payment.
Attaching the invoice
You can attach the actual invoice to an A/P payment — a PDF or an image — from the Quick-add A/P frame's Attach invoice control. The file uploads as you pick it; the payment is written afterwards, and the two are linked once the vendor exists.
A payment that has an invoice attached shows a link to it on its row, opening through a short-lived signed URL rather than a permanently readable address. A payment with no invoice shows nothing — there's deliberately no empty "no invoice" affordance, since most payments won't have one.
There's still no invoice-number field, and attaching a file is available from the quick-add frame rather than from an already-existing payment row. For payments entered the ordinary way, put the invoice number in the payment description.
Payment method — direct deposit or paper check — follows what's on file on the vendor's or contractor's own payee profile; there's nothing to choose here on the run.
Representatives
Below the table, a read-only Representatives card lists every agent, manager, or other representative owed a commission this run — one combined row per representative, summing what's withheld across every payee they represent, with the count of payees it was withheld from. This is derived entirely from what's configured on each represented payee's own profile; you can't add, edit, or remove anything from this card. See Representatives & Child Trust Payments for the full picture, including where the commission is withheld on the payee's own side.
Child Trust isn't on this step
Child Trust (Coogan) allocations show on the Employees & Loan-outs step, not here — even though it's money being set aside, it's a payment direction for a minor performer's own earnings, not a third-party bill. See Adding Employees.
Continuing from this step
Clicking Continue here is a real transition, not just moving to the next tab: it submits the run into In review status. Steps 1 and 2 no longer carry a separate "submit" of their own — Employees & Loan-outs just navigates forward, but finishing Vendors & Contractors is what advances the run's status. If any row is still unapproved, you'll get the same warning as on Employees & Loan-outs (go back, continue anyway, or approve everyone) before it proceeds.
Removing a payment
Expand the row and click Remove from run in the footer, the same as on Employees & Loan-outs — this excludes the payee from the run's totals without deleting anything. Click Re-include in run to bring them back.
Best Practices
- Put invoice numbers and any reference details in the payment description — there's no dedicated invoice-number field, though the invoice file itself can be attached from Quick-add A/P
- Choose the correct 1099 bucket when you're prompted for one — it's not something you can fix later from this screen
- Check the Representatives card before you continue — a missing or wrong commission traces back to the represented payee's profile, not to anything on this step
- Remember that Continue on this step moves the run to In review — make sure everything's entered first
Next Steps
After completing Vendors & Contractors, continue to the Payroll Summary and Union Reports steps — see Payroll Processing Introduction — or see Representatives & Child Trust Payments for more on agent, manager, and child trust payments.