I’m mostly asking about the pre-modern era, but I suppose some of the questions still apply to the modern .01 Percent.
Imagine it’s 1826 and Lord Whatever (LW) has a beautiful manor home and a roster of servants. How would his chef have paid for the food that was brought into the home? I would imagine LW would have maintained accounts with the butcher, the baker, the grocer, etc., and the chef just bought what he needed on credit and then once a month the merchant would come to collect, and he’d be paid by LW’s … accountant? Or did LW put a few shillings into a safe from time to time and the chef would use that to pay cash for the goods?
What about cleaning supplies? Same thing? Tools the groundskeeper needed? All done on credit, paid for routinely by a different servant?
In the modern era, I imagine that the household staff who serve the ultra wealthy have “company,” as it were, credit cards to handle these things. Or am I wrong about all of it?
In the modern era it’s often handled by a Family office - Wikipedia.
Farther down the food chain, some sort of company credit card is the usual. The semi-fatcat has a CPA firm that handles all the bill-paying, a law firm that handles all the law stuff, and a concierge / property management company to handle their routine gofer stuff and keep all their houses spiffy, maintained, and secured.
The richest family I know is a guy who invented something you have all used, while he was in grad school and sold it for $100M+ when that was really big money (about twenty years ago). His wife is a non-working IP lawyer who has spent the last few years suing the local school district and town for one thing after another. Mostly NIMBY stuff, but also to stop sex education, DEI and the clincher, to prevent them from naming an elementary school after a former superintendent. Their kids did not attend the public schools of course. They attended some of the most expensive private schools in the country (including one that was ranked as THE most expensive private high school in the US.
They have a “household manager” who they advertised for a few years ago. The list of job requirements was ridiculous and the pay was $50k a year! She seems to manage all the other people who keep the family comfortable. I do know that she has what is effectively a corporate credit card, with which she plays landscapers, snow plow drivers, all the utilities, etc. She arranges transport for the children to and from school, and to activities and events. Maintains a calendar for them and the wife. She has to decide what she decides on her own and what she needs to get approval from the family.
In the old big houses and manors the housekeeper kept the purse for below stairs.
I doubt she had any purveiw to outside employees.
Beware of “personal managers”. Vet them carefully!