Information return preparation support (1099s and W-2s)

Preparation support covers every 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC and W-2 your business needs to issue, built from vendor and payroll data already in QuickBooks Online, Xero or Gusto. That means W-9 collection and TIN matching for every payee added through the year, payment totals reconciled by vendor against your general ledger, draft forms prepared for your credentialed signer's review, and state copies prepared where a state requires its own information-return filing separate from the federal one. Corrections are treated the same as originals: prepared, reviewed, then handed to your signer or filing partner to transmit. What is not included is the actual transmission to the IRS or Social Security Administration, or any decision about whether a specific payment is reportable in a gray-area case, both of which stay with your credentialed signer.

Work starts with a review of your current vendor list against what already has a W-9 on file, so the gap is known before filing season rather than discovered during it. Through the rest of the year, any new vendor crossing the reporting threshold gets a W-9 request as they are added, not batched into a year-end sweep. Payment totals are pulled from your books and matched to each vendor's TIN, with mismatches flagged for correction while there is time to contact the vendor directly. In December, a draft form is prepared for every vendor and employee who needs one, reviewed against the underlying ledger, and handed to your credentialed signer with enough runway to review before the January 31 transmission deadline.

Any business paying independent contractors, freelancers, attorneys or vendors above the reporting threshold, and any business running payroll that needs W-2s issued to employees. It fits particularly well for businesses that add contractors throughout the year rather than at one fixed point, since that is exactly the pattern that causes a missing W-9 to surface in January instead of June. It also fits a business that has been burned before by a preparer who re-keyed totals from statements rather than working from reconciled books, since the two approaches produce different numbers when a transaction was miscoded.

A vendor's legal name does not match their taxpayer ID on file with the IRS, which triggers a B-notice if it goes out unmatched, so we run TIN matching before forms are finalized rather than after a notice arrives. Payment totals get split across multiple expense accounts for the same vendor, understating what should appear on a single form, so we reconcile by vendor rather than by account. A contractor is paid partly through a bank transfer and partly through a payment app, and only one of those shows up in the books someone is looking at, so we pull totals across every payment method rather than one feed. A new hire's W-2 uses an old address or a name that changed mid-year without an updated form on file, which we catch during the same reconciliation pass rather than at print time.

This work runs inside QuickBooks Online, Xero or Gusto for the underlying vendor and payroll data, with Bill.com layered in where vendor payments route through it and Track1099 used to generate and manage the actual forms once totals are confirmed. The file and any filing-platform subscription stay under your name throughout, so nothing about ownership changes because we are doing the preparation work inside it.

Information return preparation support is priced as an add-on alongside monthly bookkeeping, scaled to how many vendors and employees need a form and how much of the year's W-9 collection is already done when we start. The published rate card sets out current ranges on the pricing page; your exact fee for a given filing season is confirmed in writing before work begins, and a first season that starts mid-year with an unreconciled vendor list is priced differently from a second season starting from a list we already built.

Onboarding starts with access to your bookkeeping and payroll platforms and a pull of the current vendor list, which usually surfaces the first round of missing W-9s within the first week. From there, W-9 requests go out on a rolling basis rather than all at once, and by early December the vendor and employee list for the coming season is substantially complete. Draft forms are prepared and handed to your signer with time to review before the January 31 federal deadline, which for 2026 payments and 2026 wages falls on February 1, 2027 since January 31 lands on a Sunday.

A business that files ten or more information returns in total across all form types in a calendar year, not just ten of one kind, is required by the IRS to file electronically rather than on paper. That count adds 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC and W-2 forms together, so a business that issues six 1099s and five W-2s crosses the threshold even though neither number alone looks like much. We track this running total through the year so a growing vendor and employee list never turns into a last-minute scramble to set up an electronic filing account the week before the deadline.