What should AP do before January to avoid the 1099 season scramble?

1099-NEC: January 31 to both the recipient and the IRS - the unforgiving one. 1099-MISC: January 31 to recipients (mid-February for certain boxes), February 28 to the IRS on paper, March 31 if e-filing. Deadlines shift to the next business day when they fall on weekends/holidays; check current-year IRS instructions, since dates and thresholds have been moving in recent years.

If you file 10 or more information returns in aggregate across types in a calendar year, you must e-file - a threshold low enough that it captures nearly every business. IRIS (Information Returns Intake System) is the IRS's free e-filing portal for 1099s, supporting both manual entry and file upload; commercial filing services layer on TIN checks, recipient delivery, and state filing.

Run the ERP's 1099 report (most have one keyed to the vendor 1099 flag and box), then verify against a raw cash-disbursements query: flag mismatches where payments went to unflagged vendors, card-paid amounts that should be excluded, and totals split across duplicate records. The flag-driven report is only as good as the flags.

Sort by dollars; blast a deadline-dated solicitation to all of them (documenting it - solicitation is your penalty-abatement evidence); call the top payees; and file on time with the best data you have rather than filing late - late filing is a certain penalty, a missing TIN with documented solicitation is a defensible one.

File a corrected form through the same channel as the original (check the corrected box / use the e-file correction flow); amount and payee-name errors are one-step corrections, wrong-TIN corrections are the two-step process. A safe harbor generally relieves corrections for errors of $100 or less ($25 for withholding) unless the recipient requests a corrected form.

Verify before correcting: pull the W-9 on file (if it says S-corp and you can confirm, correct/void; if your W-9 says otherwise, ask for a current one) and re-check the amount against payment records and your reimbursement policy. Correct genuine errors promptly; don't amend just because a payee is unhappy.

Combine by TIN, not by vendor record: sum reportable payments per TIN across all records and both systems, file one form per payee, and keep the bridge workpaper. This is also the argument for deduping before December.

Services earn their fee at volume: TIN checking, e-file transmission, recipient print/mail or e-delivery, corrections, and combined federal/state filing. Below a few dozen forms, IRIS is free and adequate; above that, the service costs less than the time.

Decide once whether the old or new system files, export reportable payment history from the legacy system before access lapses, combine per TIN, and reconcile the merged totals against both systems' disbursement records. The killer mistake is assuming the new ERP "has" the history.

AP owns the data (W-9s, flags, payment totals - they live in AP's systems); tax owns positions and edge cases (classification questions, withholding, penalty responses). The handoff should be a reviewed file in December, not a January surprise.

File now - penalties tier by lateness, so every month of waiting moves you up a tier, and unfiled forms have no statute running. Late-but-filed with reasonable-cause documentation is a manageable outcome; discovered-in-audit is not.

Many states accept the Combined Federal/State Filing (CF/SF) program - the IRS forwards your data - but several require direct filing, and state withholding always does. Map your payee states once and keep the list with your filing checklist.

Stampli keeps the inputs to 1099 season clean year-round: W-9s collected at onboarding through the vendor portal, tax documents attached to vendor records with full history, vendor data synchronized with the ERP as the source of truth, and complete vendor payment history visible in one place - so year-end is a report, not a reconstruction.