# Vendor Portal The vendor portal is a dedicated space where your vendors — crew members, contractors, service providers — can submit invoices and timecards against work assigned to them, track the status of their submissions, and manage their billing relationship with your organization. It's where PAI closes the loop between what you budgeted and what you actually owe. From your side, the portal replaces the back-and-forth of collecting invoices by email, reconciling amounts manually, and chasing down receipts. Vendors submit against what you've posted, you review and approve, and the payment workflow proceeds from there. --- ## Getting Vendors onto the Portal Before a vendor can access your portal, they go through a short onboarding sequence. For a full overview of the vendor lifecycle — from creating the record to activation — see [Vendors](./Vendors.md). The short version: 1. You send an invitation from the vendor's record or from a budget expense line 2. The vendor registers a PAI account (or connects an existing one) and completes their profile 3. Their status moves to **Review Required** — your queue to review and activate them 4. You assign a classification and activate them, granting portal access The portal lives at **vendor.paihq.com**. Vendors see three tabs: **Billing**, **Messages** and **Instructions**. A vendor account can connect to multiple organizations. If a vendor already has a PAI account from working with another organization, they simply approve the connection request — no new account needed. --- ## What Vendors Can Do in the Portal What a vendor sees in their portal depends on how they've been classified. **1099 Contractor and Foreign Contractor vendors** submit invoices. A line becomes available for billing once you've **posted** it and its day has arrived: a posted line dated in the future doesn't show in the portal until that date. The vendor clicks **Create Invoice** for the project, sees the available lines grouped by day, and submits. Submitted invoices are listed under **Submitted Invoices** and numbered by project (for example **P068-001**). **W2 Employee vendors** submit timecards. Rather than creating an invoice, they enter hours worked against posted day rates. PAI calculates overtime automatically based on the method set on the expense line — Tiered (California standards), After 8, or None. Their portal shows their timecard history and payment status. **All portal users** can update their own contact information, view payment status, and download copies of documents they've submitted. --- ## Reimbursable Expenses Reimbursable expenses show up differently in the vendor portal than standard billing items. Instead of a billable dollar amount, a reimbursable starts at **$0.00** with the amount you approved shown beside it — for example, "Preapproved for up to $150.00". The vendor enters what they actually spent, attaches receipts, and can add notes. Until a receipt is attached the line is flagged as needing attention. The preapproved amount is a guide, not a hard cap: a vendor can enter more. That's why reimbursables never approve automatically. Every one lands in **Requested** for your review, over or under the preapproved amount. See [Accounts Payable](./Accounts-Payable.md). --- ## Vendor Payment Status After submitting, an invoice moves through these states: | Status | What it means | |---|---| | **Submitted** | Received; awaiting your review | | **Changes Requested** | You rejected one or more lines and sent it back. The vendor sees each rejected line's note, edits, and resubmits | | **Approved** | Reviewed and accepted; not yet scheduled for payment | | **Payment Scheduled** | A payment date has been set | | **Paid** | Set automatically when the scheduled payment date arrives | Individual lines carry their own statuses (for example **Approved**, **Requested**, **Rejected**); see [Accounts Payable](./Accounts-Payable.md). --- ## Portal Configuration ### Instructions Tab The vendor portal's **Instructions** tab shows your **Company Notes**. Vendors can read it as soon as they've registered, even before you activate them, so it's the right place for what they need before they start billing: invoicing requirements, documentation standards, payment terms, processing timelines, or anything specific to international vendors. Write it in **Settings → Vendor App → Company Notes**. ### Vendor Messaging and Document Requests PAI includes an opt-in messaging feature that lets you communicate with vendors and exchange documents directly from the vendor record — without leaving PAI. You can send messages, share files, and request documents from vendors, who can respond through their portal. Both sides receive email notifications when new messages are pending. You can also create document templates — preset collections of documents to send to vendors as a package, useful for standardizing what you send to new crew at the start of a project. Documents received from vendors through this channel are stored in the vendor record for centralized access and retrieval. To turn it on, go to **Settings → Vendor App** and switch on **Enable vendor messaging**. On the vendor record, use **Message** and **Send Files** in the header, and the **Messages** and **Files** tabs. > [!note] > Vendor information is never shared between organizations. All billing history, documents, and communications remain private to your organization's relationship with that vendor.