Vendor Onboarding Workflow
Every new vendor fully set up in 48 hours instead of chasing paperwork for 3 weeks.
You hire a new contractor or sign a new SaaS vendor. You forget to collect the W-9. The MSA sits in your Gmail drafts for 9 days. ACH info arrives in a Slack DM you'll never find again. Their first invoice comes in and your bookkeeper can't post it because there's no vendor record, no tax form, no banking info. Three weeks later you're still cleaning up.
AI COO runs a structured vendor onboarding checklist on every new spend commitment. Sends a branded intake form (W-9, ACH, COI, MSA signature), stores responses in Notion with encryption, redlines the MSA against your standard terms, creates the vendor record in QuickBooks, and pings your AI CFO when the file is complete. Nothing gets paid until the file is clean.
How it runs
- 1Trigger from any spend commitment
A signed contract in DocuSign, a new recurring charge in Mercury, a 'let's go with [vendor]' in Slack, or a manual 'new vendor' ping in chat — each one triggers AI COO to open an onboarding record.
- 2Send intake form
Branded form (Typeform or Tally) collects W-9/W-8BEN, ACH routing + account, COI for service providers, data processing addendum for SaaS with PII, and a signed MSA. Vendor gets a reminder at day 3 and day 7.
- 3Redline the MSA
AI COO compares vendor's proposed MSA against your standard terms (liability cap, IP assignment, termination for convenience, payment terms, indemnification). Flags deviations in a side-by-side doc. You review redlines in 5 minutes instead of 45.
- 4Verify banking and tax info
Bank routing number validated against ABA database. EIN validated against IRS TIN matching. Address validated via USPS. Any mismatch triggers a chat alert before you wire money to the wrong place.
- 5Create records across systems
Vendor gets a record in QuickBooks (with tax classification, payment terms, default GL account), a contact in your CRM, a folder in Google Drive with their signed docs, and a Notion page linking everything.
- 6Set up recurring or project billing
Recurring SaaS? AI COO creates a Mercury bill-pay rule and schedules reminders 7 days before renewal. Project work? Creates a milestone tracker in Linear so you catch scope creep. Contractor? Sets up 1099 tracking automatically.
- 7Archive and monitor
Complete file lives in encrypted storage. Annual renewals (W-9 refresh every 3 years, COI every year) auto-trigger re-collection. If vendor goes inactive for 6 months, AI COO flags for cleanup — reducing audit surface area.
Who runs it
What you get
- ✓New vendors fully onboarded within 48 hours of first commitment
- ✓Zero missing W-9s at 1099 time
- ✓MSAs redlined against your standards in minutes, not days
- ✓Banking info verified before first payment (zero wire fraud incidents)
- ✓Complete audit-ready file for every vendor relationship
- ✓Annual renewals (W-9, COI, MSA) handled automatically
- ✓Founder spends 5 minutes per vendor instead of 90
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from using Brex or Ramp's built-in vendor management?
Brex and Ramp store vendor records for THEIR payments — what card, what limit, what category. They don't redline MSAs, they don't validate EINs against the IRS, and they don't track COI expirations. Their vendor management is really spend controls. Tycoon handles the legal, tax, and operational side: the paperwork that makes a vendor audit-ready and tax-compliant. Most founders use Brex/Ramp for cards and Tycoon for the onboarding file — they complement, they don't overlap.
My legal MSA terms are non-negotiable — does redlining even matter?
'Non-negotiable' usually lasts until the vendor's legal team sends their standard MSA and it's full of things you'd never agree to (unlimited liability, IP ownership of your inputs, perpetual terms, arbitration in Delaware). Tycoon's redline isn't negotiating on your behalf — it's surfacing the 4-8 clauses that deviate from your standard so you can decide: accept, push back, or ask legal. For most SaaS vendors under $10K ACV the vendor accepts 90% of your redlines without escalation. For bigger contracts, the redline becomes the starting point for your lawyer instead of a blank-page review.
What about international contractors — 1099 doesn't apply, so is any of this relevant?
Very relevant, and in some ways more important. International contractors collect W-8BEN (or W-8BEN-E for entities) instead of W-9, and that form protects you from US withholding requirements. Tycoon's intake form branches automatically based on vendor country. It also handles data processing addendums required for EU/UK contractors (GDPR), currency setup (USD vs vendor-local), and payment rails (Wise/Mercury international wire vs ACH). Getting this right saves 30% US tax withholding on every invoice.
Can it handle vendors I'm paying via Stripe, PayPal, or other non-ACH rails?
Yes, but the verification is different. For Stripe/PayPal the 'banking' is really the vendor's platform account, so AI COO verifies the vendor's email owns the payment account (via a small $0.01 test charge) and stores the account ID. For crypto payments, it stores the wallet address with an on-chain verification signature. The same onboarding file applies — tax forms and MSAs don't care how you pay — just the payment-method field changes.
We have 40 existing vendors with incomplete records. Can it clean those up retroactively?
Yes, and this is usually the first thing we run. AI COO pulls your QuickBooks vendor list, cross-references against collected W-9s/ACH/COIs in Google Drive, and builds a gap report: 'These 17 vendors are missing W-9s. These 8 have expired COIs. These 5 are paid >$600/yr and you'll owe them a 1099 that you can't generate.' Then it runs an outreach campaign to close the gaps — branded emails from your domain, reminders at day 3/7/14, and a dashboard so you can see progress. Most founders close 80% of gaps in 2 weeks.
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