How to Set a Vendor's Expense Category
Every vendor can carry the expense category its bills normally belong to. Once it is set, recording a bill for that vendor starts with the right category already filled in, so the person entering it...
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Every vendor can carry the expense category its bills normally belong to. Once it is set, recording a bill for that vendor starts with the right category already filled in, so the person entering it is confirming rather than guessing.
You need the accounting configuration permission. Without it the picker is not shown at all.
Steps
- Open the Vendors card and click Manage.
- Find the vendor in the list.
- Use the category picker on the right of that row.
- Start typing to filter, then choose. It saves immediately, with no separate save button.
The picker sits on the row itself, not inside the editor:
Not set means no category has been chosen and none has been learned yet. It is not an error.
Why it is on the row and not in the editor
Deliberately. The category is the one thing you are most likely to want to fix across several vendors at once, and putting it on the row means you can scan the whole list, spot what is wrong, and correct it without opening anything. Combine it with the missing-category count on the card and you can clear the gaps in one pass.
You will not find a category field inside the vendor editor or the add form. The row is the only place it lives.
Service vendors and multiple properties
A service vendor can work across several of your properties, and the right category is not always the same in each. So for a service vendor the category is remembered per property.
Setting it here sets it for this property only. The same vendor at another property keeps its own, and one does not overwrite the other.
Accounting vendors and people belong to a single property, so this distinction does not arise for them.
If the category is greyed out or marked as retired
If a vendor's stored category points at an account that has since been made inactive, it still shows so you can see what is on file, marked as retired. Choose a current category to replace it.
If it does not save
You will see "Could not save the category." on that row. Nothing was changed. Choose it again.