Which vendors crossed the threshold, and which of them you still have no W-9 for

Drop a year of payments. This totals them by vendor, shows who crossed the reporting threshold you set, who is close enough to cross before year end, and — the part that actually costs you time in January — which of those vendors you have no tax ID on file for.

What it reads

It finds a date, an amount and a vendor column from the header row, and a tax ID column if one is there — anything named like TIN, EIN, SSN, Tax ID or W-9. Vendor names are matched with punctuation, case and company suffixes removed, so ACME Corp and Acme Corporation, Inc. total as one vendor instead of two half-totals that each sit under the threshold.

Only positive amounts count toward a vendor total. A refund or a reversal reduces what you actually paid, and it is netted off rather than added.

Two flags, and what they mean

• No tax ID. The vendor is over your threshold and the tax ID column is empty for every one of their rows. This is the W-9 chase list, and it is the only output here that saves real time — sorted by amount, because the largest ones are the ones you cannot quietly drop.
• Name suggests a corporation. Purely a reading of the name — it ends in Inc, Corp, LLC or similar. Corporations are generally outside 1099-NEC reporting, but there are real exceptions (payments to attorneys being the one everybody trips on), and an LLC may be taxed as a sole proprietorship. This is a hint to go and look at the W-9, never a determination. The form the vendor signed decides it, not their letterhead.

What it does not do

It does not decide who gets a 1099, it does not know which box a payment belongs in, and it files nothing. It adds up what you paid, groups it sensibly, and tells you where your records are incomplete. Everything after that is a conversation with your accountant.