Vendor Management

Manager release notes, 1 September 2026, Version Vender Management. Published on frontsteps.com/release-notes.

What’s New?

Vendor Management

Managers and Administrators can now manage the entire vendor lifecycle — from onboarding and insurance compliance to work order history and payments — without ever leaving FRONTSTEPS Manager.

Feature Overview

Vendor Management brings a complete, centralized vendor experience to Manager. Community Association Managers, AP Staff, and Operations Coordinators can now create and maintain vendor records, track compliance, and review a vendor’s full history directly from a single screen, eliminating the need to switch to Caliber for vendor-related tasks.

From the new Manage Vendors area (Accounting > AP), users can:

• Browse and filter vendors in a centralized list showing name, activity type, assigned community count, average rating, and an at-a-glance payability status.
• Create and maintain vendor records, including contact information, activity types, and active/inactive status.
• Track insurance compliance, with automatic enforcement that blocks payment to vendors with missing or expired insurance when the management company has insurance tracking enabled. Vendors can also be marked exempt when appropriate.
• View a vendor’s work order and invoice history directly from the vendor record, with one click into a pre-filtered list scoped to that vendor — a view that has never existed in Caliber.
• Capture notes and ratings after work is completed, in a lightweight, low-friction format designed to encourage regular use.
• Manage 1099 adjustments, ACH banking details, and W-9-based tax information needed for accurate payment and reporting.
• Assign vendors to specific communities and divisions, controlling which vendors are available for work orders and invoices in each community.
• Set mailing preferences to control how work order notifications are delivered to each vendor (email, mail, both, or neither).

Because Manager and Caliber share the same underlying data platform, all existing vendor records, invoice history, and work order data are available immediately — there is no migration step required. Benefits

• One system for every vendor task: Managers and AP Staff can now create, assign, insure, note, and pay vendors entirely within Manager, removing the constant back-and-forth with Caliber that slowed down daily work.
• Payment confidence, at a glance: Color-coded payability status makes it immediately clear whether a vendor is compliant and eligible for payment, reducing the risk of paying a vendor with expired or missing insurance.
• Operational history in one place: Work order and invoice history are now surfaced directly on the vendor record — a view Caliber never offered — turning the vendor profile into a true operational reference instead of a static address book.
• Lower-friction feedback: Notes and ratings are quick to capture, making it easier for teams to build a reliable performance history for every vendor over time.
• Cleaner vendor selection: Community and division assignments ensure that only relevant, approved vendors appear when creating work orders and invoices for a given community.