14. The Case of the Portal Delivery

PREVIOUSLY: THE CASE OF THE USPS DELIVERY

Though Walter would have preferred to email all his vendors their forms, some of his vendors did not provide an email address. For these vendors, Walter selected USPS delivery. Tax1099 offers this additional service, so that their users don’t have to go through the trouble of printing, folding, stuffing, stamping, and delivering vendor forms. Vendor form delivery can be a tiring task. With Tax1099, Walter felt that it would be quick and easy.

Walter had explored the email and USPS delivery options. Now, he wanted to know if he had any other options to choose from. He had heard of something called “Portal Delivery.” It was time to look into what Portal Delivery could do for him and his 1099 process.

THIS WEEK

Walter felt that he was really starting to understand how Tax1099 worked, and where everything was listed. He figured that he should return to the Forms > Manage Forms page to look for other vendor form delivery options. Scanning the top of the chart on that page, Walter found “Send PDF to Portal.”

This looked intriguing. Before selecting the option, Walter opened up a live chat window with a Tax1099 specialist.

“Hello,” he typed, “What can you tell me about this ‘Send PDF to Portal’ option?”
“With Portal delivery,” the specialist replied, “Your vendor will receive an email with instructions on receiving their form. Portal delivery is similar to email delivery, except that your vendor won’t receive the form directly in their email.”
“Oh?” Walter questioned, “Tell me more, please.”
“With email delivery, vendors receive a password-protected PDF that they can open in their email. With portal delivery, vendors are directed to a separate portal to retrieve their form. The form is still password protected.”
“Interesting,” Walter said. “Thank you for the information!”
“Sure! Keep in mind that you can track the form delivery by going to Reports > Forms Delivery Report.” The specialist answered. “Let us know if you have anymore questions!”

This portal delivery option could be a good option, Walter thought. He was happy with email delivery, too, though. He would most likely select email delivery for his vendors. He would send his other vendors their forms via USPS mail.

NEXT WEEK

With the 1099 deadline fast approaching, Walter was beginning to feel the panic creep in again. He had scheduled his forms to submit a week before the deadline. This meant that he his window for making edits to the forms was quickly closing in on him. He decided he would look his forms over one more time, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.