Paying Your Network Technicians & 1099s
Approve the work, record what you pay, track what you owe, and run your 1099-NECs.
Private Network pay is settled between you and your technician's company, off-platform. This article covers what happens once the work is done: approving it, what you owe and when it's due, recording what you pay, and 1099-NECs at the end of the year. For offering work, agreeing the pay and setting your payment terms, see Private Technician Network.
Before you start
Set your payment terms and payment method on the Billing tab of your own company's client profile (owners, admins, project managers and accounting users can open it). They decide every approved visit's due date — without them a visit shows No due date.
Both pages below are under Accounting in the sidebar: Network Tech Payments and Network 1099-NEC.
Getting paid
Private Network pay is off-platform. The money moves between you and the technician's company however you have agreed — there is no escrow, no payout schedule, and no marketplace fee. Service Envoy does not touch it.
That is the advantage and it is also the catch: because the platform never sees the money, it cannot tell you whether it moved. So payments are something you record, and those records are what every report, badge and total below is built from.
A visit's payment moves through these states:
Tech Payment Owed — you approved the technician's submitted work. Approving is the moment you accept the job and become liable for it, and it starts the clock on your payment terms.
Due Soon — the due date is within the next three days.
Overdue — the due date has passed and it isn't fully paid.
Tech Partially Paid — you've recorded paying some of it, and part is still outstanding.
Tech Paid — what you've recorded covers what you owe.
Only a payment you record marks a visit paid. Due Soon and Overdue come from the due date.
Approving the work
When the technician submits the visit, the approved total is worked out from their agreed pay and on-site time, plus travel pay, plus any extra pay or expenses you approved. That one figure is what you owe, and it's the same figure the payments page and the 1099 report use.
If the technician has a request for extra pay or an expense still waiting on you, Approve is refused until you approve or deny it — so the amount you approve is the amount you owe.
If a visit was approved without a submitted total, it shows Amount unknown rather than $0.00. Enter what you actually paid when you record the payment.
Approving also sets the due date. Your payment terms at that moment are stamped onto the visit: the due date is the approval date plus your net days (Paid on Receipt is due the same day). Changing your terms later never moves a due date that's already set. If your terms aren't set, the visit shows No due date until they are.
Payment fee. If you set a Payment Fee, it's worked out at approval — the percentage of labor if you ticked Fee on Labor Only, otherwise of the whole approved total — and taken off. What you owe is the approved total minus the fee, and that's the figure on the visit, on the payments page, on the technician's side and in the 1099 report.
Recording a payment
Once you approve a Private Network site visit, a Technician Payment card appears on the visit's Financials tab, under Technician Rates. It shows Approved, Paid and Remaining, and underneath, every payment recorded against the visit.
Pay the technician however the two of you agreed — check, ACH, Zelle, whatever — then click Record Tech Payment at the top of the site visit (or Record Payment on the Technician Payment card, the same form) and fill in:
Amount Paid — starts at what's still owed. Enter a smaller amount to record a partial payment; the card then shows what remains and offers Record Another Payment for the rest. If you enter more than is owed, you have to tick This is an intentional overpayment and say why — the reason is kept with the payment.
Payment Date — the day it left your account. Backdating is normal: you're usually recording a check you wrote last week.
Payment Method — check, ACH / direct deposit, PayPal, Zelle, Cash App. It's filled in from the technician's usual payment method when you have one on file. (There is no "platform" option — a payment through the platform isn't a Private Network payment.)
Reference — optional. Check number, confirmation code, anything that lets you find it again.
Internal Note — optional, and the only field your team alone can see.
Paying several visits at once
One check often covers a week of work. Go to Accounting → Network Tech Payments, tick the owed visits the payment covers, and click Record payment. A payment goes to one technician, so tick visits for one technician at a time. The dialog lists each visit with Amount per Site Visit set to what's left on it; adjust any line if the payment split differently, then save once. It's recorded as one payment covering those visits.
The technician sees the payment too
The amount, date, method and reference appear on the technician's copy of the site visit and in their Payments received list, and they're notified when you record it. Your internal note is never shown to them.
This is deliberate. A payment record only one side can read settles nothing. If you mark a visit paid and the money never reached them, they can see that straight away and ask, instead of the two of you discovering the gap next January.
Correcting a payment you recorded wrong
Payments are never edited or deleted. If one is wrong, Void it — you'll be asked for a reason — and record the correct one. A voided payment stays on the record, struck through with your reason, on your side and the technician's, and the technician is told. The visit's Paid and Remaining figures update straight away.
A payment that covers several visits is voided from the Payments view on Accounting → Network Tech Payments rather than from one visit, because voiding it affects all of them.
Nothing is at risk when you void — no money moved when you recorded it and none moves now. It only changes what the record says.
Seeing everything you owe at once
Accounting → Network Tech Payments gathers it all up. Three views:
By visit — every approved Private Network visit with what's outstanding and what's been paid. Owed visits sort to the top; clicking one opens the visit.
By technician — the same totals added up per technician. This is the one to run on payday.
Payments — every payment you've recorded, including voided ones, with Void on each.
Each visit shows its Due date and any Payment Fee. An aging summary shows the unpaid balance by how late it is: Current, 1–30 days late, 31–60 days late, 60+ days late and No due date.
Filters across the top narrow it down: Status (including Due Soon and Overdue), Dates by (approval date or payment date) with From and To, and Owed as of, which answers "what did we owe on this date?" — handy for month-end. Every view has Export CSV.
Your dashboard carries a Technician Payments card, shown to users who can see financials. The jump card at the top counts every visit you haven't fully paid, and the card itself has four tabs: Due Soon, Overdue, All Owed and Recently Paid.
Reminders. Once a day, the people who can see financials get one bell and email listing the visits due in the next three days, due today, and overdue — an overdue visit is included on its first day late and then once a week until it's paid. The technician gets a bell the day a payment to them goes overdue.
1099s at the end of the year
Private Network technicians are your contractors, not the platform's, so you issue them a 1099-NEC — Service Envoy does not send tax forms for this work. Accounting → Network 1099-NEC totals each technician company for the year, pulls their W-9 details, and flags who crosses the $600 threshold.
That report can count a year two ways. By date approved is what you became liable for during the year. By date paid is what actually left your account — each payment counted in the year it was made, which is the cash basis a 1099-NEC normally reports. It only works as well as your recorded payments, so keep them current rather than reconstructing them in January. Either way, the report shows a Not Yet Paid count beside each technician: approved visits you haven't fully recorded paying. If that number isn't zero when you file, find out why first.