Paying vendors on a client's behalf

How an event planner records florist, venue and caterer costs it pays for a client, recharges them on the client's invoice and proves nothing was missed.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Events businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A wedding or product launch planner rarely just plans. The florist wants paying before the flowers are cut, the marquee company wants its balance before set-up, and the client expects one invoice from you at the end that covers everything. In between, your bank account carries thousands in costs that are not really yours.

If those costs go straight into your expenses and the recharge straight into your income, your management accounts show a planning business far bigger, and far less profitable per job, than it really is. Worse, a florist's bill that was paid but never recharged disappears into the noise. A clearing account keeps the two apart and makes a forgotten recharge easy to spot.

Your fee versus the client's costs

Every job has two kinds of money in it:

• Your fee. What you charge for planning, coordinating and being on site at midnight. This is your income.
• The client's costs. The venue, catering, flowers, décor and entertainment you book and pay for on the client's behalf, then pass on.

Some planners recharge costs at exactly what they paid; others add an agreed handling margin. Investopedia's article on cost-plus contracts sets out how arrangements that reimburse costs plus an agreed fee or margin work, and their pros and cons for each side. Whichever you use, write it into the client agreement, including whether the client sees vendors' invoices.

There is also a VAT question. Whether a cost you pass on is a recharge that forms part of your own supply or a payment you made purely as the client's agent is decided differently in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, and it changes whether VAT is charged on it. Settle it with your accountant for your country before you set up the accounts below.

A clearing account for costs paid on behalf

Your books open with a standard chart of accounts, and you can add accounts, rename them or switch them off. Add one current-asset account named something like "Client event costs to recharge". Every cost you pay for a client goes in there instead of into your expenses.

The idea is that the account fills up as you pay vendors and empties as you recharge them. At the end of a job, it should be back where it started for that client. Anything left behind is a cost you paid but have not billed.

If you run several jobs at once, keep a simple job list beside the account: client, vendor, bill number, amount, and the invoice you recharged it on. The account tells you something is left over; the list tells you which job it belongs to.

Vendor bills to the clearing account

Record each vendor's invoice as a supplier bill, line by line with its VAT, and code the lines to the clearing account. A bill entered without a purchase order waits for approval before it posts, which suits a planning business: a second person sees each cost before it lands. Bills can be paid in full or in parts from the bank account you choose, which helps when a caterer wants half now and half after the event.

Put the client's name and the event date in each bill's description. When someone reviews the clearing account months later, that is what lets them match a bill to its job without phoning you.

A note for planners in Nigeria and Kenya: supplier bills currently offer only 15% or 0% VAT and default to 15%, rather than your country's own rate. Check the VAT on every vendor bill line before it posts, and agree with your accountant how to treat any difference.

Recharging on the client's invoice

When you invoice the client, list your fee and the recharged costs as separate lines, so the client can see both. Issuing the invoice posts it to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT, and it can be e-mailed as a PDF on your letterhead.

Here is the snag to plan for. All invoice revenue currently posts to one account, Professional Services Revenue (4100), and an invoice line cannot name another account. So the recharge lines land in your revenue, not in the clearing account, even though you set it up for exactly that purpose.

The fix is a monthly journal. For each recharge invoiced that month, post a manual journal that moves the recharged amount out of revenue and into the clearing account. A journal must balance, one dated in a closed month is refused, and a posted journal can only be corrected by reversing it, so build the journal from your job list rather than from memory.

A worked example in words: you pay the florist's bill and code it to the clearing account. At month end you invoice the client your fee plus the flowers. Your month-end journal takes the flower amount out of revenue and puts it against the clearing account. Revenue now shows only your fee, and the clearing account is back to nothing for that client.

Checking the account is empty after the event

Once the last vendor bill is in and the client has been invoiced, open the general ledger for the clearing account. It lists every posted line, so you can tick bills against recharges for that event. The trial balance shows the account's balance for a period or at a date.

Do this check before you close the month and before you call the job finished. A forgotten recharge found a week after the event is an awkward e-mail; found a year later, it is usually a loss.

Setting it up this week

Add the clearing account, start the job list, and agree the VAT treatment and the monthly journal with your accountant. If some of your payments to vendors are deposits made long before the event, read deposits paid to venues and caterers, and to see what each job actually earned you once costs are separated, read seeing the profit on each event.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.