Payees

A payee is the person or business on the other side of a transaction — who you paid or who paid you. Naming your payees turns cryptic bank descriptions into something readable, powers your reports, and lets Doric suggest a category the next time that payee shows up.

Getting there

Click the Payees icon in the left sidebar to open the Payees page — a searchable, sortable table of everyone in your books. Click + Add Payee to create one, or click a payee's name to edit it.

You don't have to build this list up front. Payees appear on their own as you work — you can create one on the fly from the register's payee picker (type a new name and add it), and an import can auto-create payees for you. This page is where you tidy, merge details onto, and enrich the list once it exists.

The Payees table

Each row is one payee. Click a column header to sort, or type in the filter row to find someone in a long list. Use Columns to choose which fields to show and drag them into the order you like; Reset column widths puts the widths back to their defaults. The columns available:

Payee — the name (always shown).
Address — the mailing address, combined into one line.
SSN/EIN — masked as ••••• in the table; the real value is only shown when you open the payee to edit it.
1099 Eligible — a ✓ for payees you'll issue a 1099 to.
Type — Vendor, Customer, Employee, or Other.
Default Category — the category Doric suggests for this payee (see below).

Adding or editing a payee

The payee window collects everything Doric knows about them:

Name — required; this is what shows up in the register and on reports.
Type — Vendor, Customer, Employee, or Other.
Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP — the mailing address, handy for 1099s.
SSN / EIN — the tax ID, entered as XXX-XX-XXXX.
Eligible for 1099 — tick this for contractors and vendors you report.
Default category — expense and Default category — income — see the next section.

Click Save to keep your changes, or Delete to remove the payee. You can also open the window by double-clicking a row.

Default categories

A payee can carry a default category that Doric suggests whenever you assign that payee to an uncategorized transaction. There are two — one for money out (expense) and one for money in (income) — because the same payee can sit on both sides. A bank, for instance, might default to Bank Fees on the way out and Interest Income on the way in. Doric picks the right one from the sign of the transaction.

Tip: you don't have to set defaults here by hand. When you categorize a transaction that has a payee, Doric offers to Always suggest that category for that payee — accept it and the default is set for you, then applied to any matching uncategorized rows. Under the hood these defaults are ordinary rules, so they suggest rather than silently rewriting.

Assigning payees to transactions

Most payee work happens in the register. Open a transaction's Payee picker to search your list — or type a new name and add it right there. When a rule suggests a payee, it appears faded on the row until you approve it; select several rows and use Approve Payees to accept them all at once, or Payee… in the bulk bar to set the same payee on everything selected. To see one payee's activity, set the register's Payee filter to their name.

1099 tracking

For contractors you report to the IRS, mark the payee Eligible for 1099 and fill in their address and SSN / EIN. At year end, the 1099 / Payees report totals what you paid each eligible payee so you have the numbers and details in one place. See Reports.

Importing and exporting payees

Migrating from another program? You can bring your payee list in as a CSV on the Payees tab of the import screen — the only required column is Name, with optional columns for type, address, SSN/EIN, and 1099 eligibility. To take your list with you, use the toolbar's Export → Payees. See Importing transactions for the full import walkthrough.

Where to go next

Turn payee defaults into broader automation with Categorization rules, and see what your payees add up to in Reports.