How to automatically collect W-9s from contract workers

Contract workers are an awesome resource to have. They're great for filling skill-set gaps on your team and assisting with part-time or flexible workloads at your business. Using contract workers also gives you access to global talent.

Although they offer tremendous flexibility without the high cost of hiring in-house, you're still required to keep track of your external workforce. Part of this responsibility involves requesting a W-9 form from each contractor so that you can issue 1099s at the end of the fiscal year. 

This task can be cumbersome to oversee, especially if you're working with several contractors/vendors at once. This is especially true if your business model requires that you work with new contractors every month. W-9 collection can become a full-time job!

If you know that you need to cut down on the time you spend on administrative work related to contract workers, but have no clue where to begin, you've come to the right place. 

Here's how to set up our ultra time-saving W-9 Collection Zap for yourself.

Avoid W-9 woes and automate with Zapier

The Founder & CEO of Satterley Training & Consulting, Heather Satterley, is a lover of all things Zapier. If there's a process in our firm that can be automated, you can bet she's built a Zap for it. So when she realized the process for collecting W-9s from vendors could be automated, she turned to Zapier to create our W-9 Collection Zap. This Zap automatically emails a blank W-9 form to all of our service vendors when they are added to our QuickBooks Online company. No more chasing vendors when it's time to prepare our 1099s. It's a truly amazing time-saver that you can easily implement in your own business. 

How to set up your W-9 collection Zap

Prep work: Set up QuickBooks Online

Our Zap will start when something happens in QuickBooks Online. Before we head into Zapier and begin creating our Zap, we first need to log into our QuickBooks Online account and make sure we have data we'll use for testing. 

Once you're logged in, you'll want to add a new vendor.

This next step sets the parameters for the entire Zap. After you select New Vendor and enter your test vendor's information into the fields, you need to make sure that the box next to Track payments for 1099 is checked. Checking this box tells you that you need to get a W-9 from that particular vendor. Hit Save. Now we can start creating our Zap!

Trigger step: QuickBooks Online, new vendor

Once you're signed into Zapier and you click Make a Zap, you'll be prompted to set your trigger app and event. As previously mentioned, we already know that QuickBooks Online is the app that starts our Zap, so do a quick search and select QuickBooks Online.

Now, we'll choose our trigger event. This is what actually starts the Zap. For the W-9 Collection Zap, we want the automated workflow sequence to begin any time a new vendor is added. Select New Vendor and then click Continue.

Select Manage connected accounts on the screen where you're setting up your trigger.

Use the search box to find QuickBooks Online. The app will appear under Add new connection. Click Connect.

You'll then be guided through the process of authorizing Zapier to access your QuickBooks Online account. No need to worry, it's super secure. In fact, after building this Zap you'll probably start recognizing other QBO processes you can automate to save yourself some valuable time. 

Now, you'll have to choose which QuickBooks Online account you'd like to connect Zapier to for this particular workflow. Select the appropriate account and click Continue.

Your trigger is now all set! Let's test it to confirm that the right account is connected and everything is configured properly.

Add a Filter

Zapier offers built-in tools that help you supercharge your Zaps by refining specific data. For our W-9 Collection Zap, we're going to use the Filter by Zapier app. This app will allow us to set a filter to see if the Track payments for 1099 box is checked when a new vendor is created in QuickBooks Online. Once the filter is set, Zapier will only run the Zap if the condition is true..

In the Action step, we're going to select Filter by Zapier. Click Continue.

Since not all of our vendors are service vendors, we have to tell Zapier "Hey! Only complete the Action if I check the Track payments for 1099 box in QuickBooks Online." 

Let's set the conditions:

In the setup and testing area, under Only continue if… click in the Choose field box and select Vendor1099 (the QuickBooks logo next to it means this is information Zapier found in your trigger step). Under Choose condition select (Boolean) Is true. This means the Zap will only continue if the Vendor 1099 checkbox is checked in QuickBooks Online.

Add your Gmail action

Now that we have our filter conditions set, we can start working on the main action in this workflow, which is to create an email in Gmail. The email will automatically be sent to the vendor with a blank W-9 attached to it, along with a link to upload the completed W-9 to a folder in our Sharefile account. 

Select Gmail as your action app. Then, select Send Email as the action event. This is what Zapier will do every time this Zap runs. Click Continue.

Select the Gmail account that you want the email to send from. Click Continue.

After you choose your Gmail account, you'll create the email that will be sent to your vendors. 

For the To email address, you'll want to choose the email field from your QuickBooks step. Like in the Filter step, you'll click in the box then select from a list of options. For the From email address, you'll type in the address you'd like the email to come from. You'll also type in your own Subject line, which could be something like "Please upload a completed W-9." 

For the email body type, you can choose Plain, which will just produce raw text for your email (but this means no hyperlinks, which we need for this specific automation). We'll instead choose HTML. If you don't know HTML, don't worry. We have a resource for you: wordhtml.com. It converts text to HTML and it's totally free! Here's how it works:

Go to wordhtml.com and enter your email content into the Word Editor.

Click HTML and bam! Your email content is converted to html format almost effortlessly! Copy and paste the html content into the email body section on Zapier.

You'll want to attach a W-9 to the email itself. We recommend downloading this from the IRS, and checking occasionally to be sure you have the most recent version. You can find the link on this IRS page.

Run a test to make sure everything looks the way it should. When you test your Zap, an email will be sent to the email you've used in your test data. You'll want to be sure that it's going to you or a team member, so you can confirm everything looks good.

If you're happy with how it looks, you're ready to begin using your Zap! From that point forward, every time you add a new vendor with the 1099 checkbox marked in QuickBooks Online, Zapier will send this email for you from Gmail—with no action required on your part.

Let Zapier do the work for you

This has saved us tons of time because we don't have to remember to reach out to the vendor and manually request a form W-9 from them. Pretty cool stuff.

Related reading:

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• Simple ways to automate bookkeeping

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