Jen_D,

Your advice fails to acknowledge that we cannot create new contractors/vendors in QBO, so there's no record to edit.  Until - that is - the prospective vendor replies to the email and creates their own account, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.  I'd also like to point out that this requirement is highly discriminatory (lots of folks lack computers, internet access, etc etc) in addition to being unattractive to folks who already mistrust such systems.

For the rest of us, here's a possible workaround: if you have some old/inactive contractors in your list, you can edit one of their records and replace their info with the new W-9 info!  (Our database was ported over from the far-superior Intuit Online Payroll, and in that process, all the existing contractors were reset to Active but all their payment records were deleted.  What a disaster.)  I'm sure this isn't database-kosher, and the moderators probably won't like it, but it's not like the programmers have left us much choice.  And it seems to work just fine.