Merging List Names

Merging List Names

No matter how careful you are with your QuickBooks data file, duplicate listings in your customer or vendor lists are inevitable. There are many reasons this happens. Perhaps a company’s name has changed and another QuickBooks user set up a new name in the list rather than updating the existing one. Or maybe the data file has been in use for many years, and prior users created a new name every time they made a typo . Duplicate names seem to be especially prevalent if you are a heavy user of online banking in QuickBooks and download your transactions.

The more duplicates you have in your lists, the more you have to sort through when scrolling to find the desired name for a transaction. Every extra scroll adds up over the course of a year—and more scrolling equals less vacation time for you! A little housekeeping can tidy up your lists and make them more user- friendly, and it’s really quite easy.

• The first choice would be to try to delete the unwanted name directly from the list. If there’s no activity associated with the account, QuickBooks will quickly and easily let you delete the duplicate entry. No harm done in that case.
• But what if you can't delete the entry? You might consider making the customer or vendor inactive. Simply choose the targeted listing, right click on it, and select “Make Inactive.” However, keep in mind that even inactive names count toward your list limits in QuickBooks.    
• The best solution is to merge the duplicate entries. Assuming the duplicate names are really the same entity, QuickBooks has the ability to merge the names together.

Here’s an example of how this is done. Let's say you have a vendor in your vendor list called NW Energy and another vendor named Northwestern Energy. In reviewing the details of both accounts, you see that they are indeed the same entity. Follow these steps to merge the two list names: 

1.Choose which name will be the name left in the vendor list. For our example, we’ll use Northwestern Energy.
2. Highlight the name Northwestern Energy in the Vendor List. Right mouse click and choose Edit Vendor.
3. Copy the Vendor Name and then click on OK to close the screen.
4. Highlight the vendor NW Energy in the vendor list. Right mouse click and choose Edit Vendor.
5. Paste the Vendor Name Northwestern Energy in the Vendor Name field. Click OK to close the screen.
6. A warning message will appear as shown below. Click Yes to merge the two names.

Once this process is complete, you’ll have one listing in your vendor list called Northwestern Energy and all of the transactions will be found under that vendor.

Some final thoughts.

•    The merge process CANNOT be undone, so make a backup before you start this process.
•    You must be in single user mode to merge lists.
•    You can only merge one account at a time. There is no capability to do a mass merge within QuickBooks.
•    You can merge names in every list except employee names. Look at your items, classes, chart of accounts, vendors, customers, etc. and see how you can clean up those lists.
•     The merge information does not show up in the audit trail report.
•    When you pull up a transaction that was originally recorded with the old list name (NW Energy in our scenario), the name field—such as Vendor on a bill, Pay to the Order of on a check, Customer:Job on an invoice—will display the new name (in this case, Northwestern Energy). However, the original list name, NW Energy, will be displayed in the Address field.

If you have any questions or concerns about cleaning up names in one of your lists, don’t hesitate to contact us. Have fun cleaning up your lists!