# Vendor accounts > An entity's purchasing relationship with a company or person: terms, payable account, and expense account. A vendor account is how one of your legal entities pays a company or person it buys from. It sits beside any customer account for the same company or person. ## How it works A vendor account holds the vendor's **Payment terms**, the **Payable account** where what you owe them posts, a default **Expense account**, and whether they receive a 1099. An entity has at most one vendor account per company or person, and each gets a number, such as VEND-2. Finance does not record vendor bills yet, so nothing posts to a vendor account's accounts on its own. You can still name the vendor on a [journal entry](/docs/apps/finance/journal-entries) line. ## Next steps The same relationship, for whom you bill. Record what you pay a vendor.