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Reminder About Special Characters in the Vendor Database

August 21, 2017

Help us keep the vendor database free of unusual characters! Independent contractors of Northwestern University receive a 1099 form annually. The IRS requires electronic filing and limits the type of non-alpha numeric characters in the name to the hyphen or space.

In order to comply the Vendor File Management (VFM) team strips out unnecessary characters such as the period, comma, umlaut, slash, underscore, apostrophe, etc.

Vendor File Management screenshot

Hyphenated last names are permissible, as is the use of name suffixes such as Jr, Sr, or II.

Questions? Please contact the VFM helpline at 847.491.4707 or vendorprocessing@northwestern.edu.

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