Payment made by contractor to drafting company to pay for engineering fees

Hello there, @drod1.

I'd like to appreciate you for taking the time to explain your scenario in as much detail as possible. No worries, I'm here to provide some information with regard to recording payments in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT).

First, I'd like to clarify that you don't need to create a liability account to record these transactions. Please follow the steps below to know how:

To record the payment you made to your engineers, I'd recommend creating a check. Here's how:

1. Go to the Vendors menu, then select Pay Bills.
2. Select the correct accounts payable account from the dropdown.
3. Select the checkboxes of the bills you want to pay from the table. 
4. Set any discount or credit that you want to apply to the bills.
5. Enter the date you paid the bill.
6. Select Check.
7. Click on Pay Selected Bills.
8. Select Done, or select Pay More Bills if you have other bills you need to pay.

You may add a memo to the bill to indicate that it was made via Zelle.

On the other hand, here's how to record your contractor's payments:

1. Go to the Customers menu and select Create Sales Receipts.
2. Select the customer from the Customer: Job dropdown.
3. Add the products and services the contractor is paying for.
4. Fill out the rest of the sales receipt.
5. Select the payment method: Cash, Check, or Visa (for credit cards).
6. When you're done, select Save & Close.

Additionally, paying bills is part of your usual accounts payable workflow in QuickBooks Desktop. To see the list of workflows and other vendor-related transactions, you can utilize this article: Accounts Payable workflows in QuickBooks Desktop.

Feel free to utilize the comment section below if you have additional questions regarding managing Zelle payments in QBDT. I'll be sure to get back to you. Have a good one.

What you doing here is ilegal or at least subject to disciplinary actions.  Most PE Boards have specific No No about PE financial relationships through 3rd parties.  Very similar restrictions to most profesional licensed practices that are state regulated.

The reason this is so is that the state want to make sure that the Profesional Engineer be directly responsible to the project owener in the event something goes bad. When there is an issue with contractor, the first thing is to seek if there is a error of ommision from the engineer or arqutiect of record.