Import your customers and suppliers list to QuickBooks

EstherY · ‎November 15, 2018

If you have a list of customers and suppliers you’d like to import, you can do so by following the steps below. This saves you from manually creating your customer and supplier records one by one.

Before you start, make sure that your excel spreadsheets are ready and in a format that is accepted by QuickBooks. You can download a sample here.

Things to look out for before you start

The file size limit is 2MB. We found that customers have the best experience when importing no more than 400 rows at one time. If there are more than 400 rows, we recommend that you split them into multiple lists and import them individually using the steps below.
Sub-customers can't be imported. Import sub-customers as customers and change them to sub-customers after the import.
If the file imported incorrectly and it needs to be re-imported, it does not overwrite customer/supplier records that have been created in QuickBooks, but it will be added to your customer/supplier list again.
The entries in the Name field must be unique. A supplier, customer, and employee can't have the same name.
The import only supports ONE email address--you can add others later.
Make sure that your file is in the format below:

Your column headers are in the first row.
Your spreadsheet is on Sheet1.
Your spreadsheet doesn't contain any formulas, charts or blank rows.
Your spreadsheet doesn't contain any errors (like #REF!, #NAME?, #N/A or #VALUE!).
Names don't contain colons (:) or quotation marks (").

When you are ready

Select the Gear icon at the top.
Under Tools, choose Import Data.
From the list, select Customers or Suppliers, depending on which you want to import.
Select the Browse button.
Select your Excel file, click Open then select Next to continue.
Map the headers in your Excel file to the fields in QuickBooks, then click Next. Refer to Map your fields to QuickBooks fields section below for more step by step guidance.
Adjust your data if necessary then select Import.

Map your fields to QuickBooks fields

This step is very important to make sure that you are mapping the fields in your spreadsheet to QuickBooks fields correctly.

The left column depicts the field names that QuickBooks uses and the fields in the right column is from your spreadsheet. To reduce errors, we recommend that you update the field names your excel spreadsheet before you upload your file.

Check this list to make sure that the fields are mapped correctly. If you wish to change a mapping, click on the dropdown arrow and select the correct field.

Richtun · ‎February 28, 2020

I am trying to suppliers from a .csv file. I only want Company field populated. the system insists I put something in Name field but it rejects everything I put in there.

John C · ‎February 28, 2020

Hi Richtun

You will have to enter a name and a company as they are mandatory, you do not have to import any other information. You are not able to have any duplications throughout the spreadsheet. We suggest that you create a spreadsheet with just the colum headings Name and company and only one line to test if you are able to import it.

Richtun · ‎February 28, 2020

I don't need or don't have a Name for most of my suppliers. 90% of my suppliers are faceless corporations. If I can add a supplier without a Name manually, why can't I import a file without a Name field?

EmmaM · ‎February 28, 2020

Hello Richtun

If you are for example importing a supplier list then it does require this information as it wants to create suppliers and in QuickBooks creating suppliers means having a name.

Yes when you create a transaction you do not need to have a supplier in it to save the transaction but the import function needs that information

You can map the name section to be the same as company when you do the mapping part of the upload by selecting company for both on the mapping. We appreciate some suppliers you do not have a name just an overall company

Emma

catherinek · ‎April 28, 2020

We have numerous customers which have more than one shipping address. I understand that I can add the customers with multiple addresses as sub customers but what do you recommend when the customer only has one billing address and one shipping address? Will I be able to import the shipping address at the initial import stage or will I need to manually add in the shipping addresses?

Ashleigh1 · ‎April 28, 2020

Hello Catherinek,

Welcome to the Community page,

when you import customers you can only have 1 address, if you add the customer within QuickBooks you can add two addresses.

edc9500 · ‎August 11, 2020

Can you make the name a space character just to get it imported? We also do not have names for every company.

JasroV · ‎August 11, 2020

Thanks for joining this thread, @edc9500.

When importing customers list to your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account, you’ll need to enter the information needed for the function to work. Doing so will ensure you can import the list smoothly.

Once you’re done, you have the option edit your customer information by going through the Sales menu. Let me show you how.

Go to the Sales menu.
Select the Customers tab.
Locate and double-click the customer you want to edit.
Select Edit.
Change your customer information if necessary and click Save.

Once you’re all set up, you can now send an invoice to your customer.

Tag me in if you have other questions in mind. I’ll be around to answer them for you. Have a great day!

Anonymous · ‎June 25, 2022

Hello,

this is not my experience.

1. QBO forced me to include data in EVERY SINGLE BOX. It took me HOURS to figure that out, and the so-called helpdesk kept making things worse as they kept giving me incorrect information.

2. Also, 'name' turns out to be the COMPANY NAME..........not the name of an individual. AND THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE THE DETAILS IN BULK AFTERWARDS. I had to abandon the account I had already set up and create a new one, because all the 'advice' I was given was incorrect (just like the adivce being given here is INCORRECT) which meant all my suppliers had been incorrectly imported. Eg, instead of 'ADOBE' as my company, due to the incorrect QBO template and incorrect advice given by the QBO people, my suppliers came across a 'Joe Smith'. Because 'name' is saved down as company name............I don't know what they use the 'company' column for because it's certainly not for the name of the company. Even after days discussing this with the 'EXPERT' who gave me all the incorrect advice which caused me to lose days of my life, the same expert kept sending follow-on emails doubling down on their nonsense......................here's an extract of their texts...............can you make sense of any of this..............????

"Please know that the name field is for the supplier name, not a company name. The company field is the one for supplier business name. The name field is important since we are getting red when mapping it and there is no option to choose the no match. So, I advise you to add the supplier name, not the company name. The link I provided you, will help you import the suppliers."

The link they provided brought me here......to this chat.......which cuts and pastes the same text from everywhere else on the qbo website about importing suppliers/vendors. So clearly the online experts don't have a clue - they've never used qbo, they're just reading all these community discussions. To add, this 'advice' was given days after the 'expert' had messed up my supplier-import and after I had already complained about them.

Finally - can anyone explain the difference between supplier name and company name.............???? Seriously?????????? makes no sense. And in any event, this person had said in a chat that the 'name' was for the individuals within the company, not the actual company name.

Going back to the nonsense advice given in this chain: (i) you absolutely CANNOT import your suppliers without completely filling every box; (ii) I cut and pasted the same n/a or 000 into each field which I was going to leave blank. So yes, duplications are accepted.

How useful is this - ie, having to insert unhelpful data into each box on that stupid template - completely unhelpful because it's going to later have to be deleted.

Anonymous · ‎June 25, 2022

do not do this..............this 'name' field is actually the company name.......... I did something like this, and then had to delete my account and set up a whole new account.

The 'experts' on here don't seem to actually use the software........they just regurgitate the same incorrect nonsense repeated ad infinitem by all the other so called experts.

JPM-TestingSoftware · ‎September 08, 2022

I haved tested today 8th Sept 2022 and found that 'Supplier display name' is the unique field that QBO uses.

Unfortuately you cannot import 'Supplier display name' nor can you set a value such as

Supplier display name = Company name
Supplier display name = First name Last name
Supplier display name = Last name, First name
Supplier display name= Title First name Middle name Last name Suffix

in the import file which would be good and should not be too difficult for developers to do.

At the moment you need to import your suppliers making sure that no 2 suppliers happen to have the same contact name, since the importing wizard counts the contact name as the unique field rather than the company name. Then after importing you need to painstakingly go through each and every imported supplier and change the Supplier display name to show the company name.

I have found that you can import with blank fields but Contact Name field cannot be blank - however if your spreadsheet/csv file only has Company name you can set Contact Name & Company Name to equal Company Name in the import wizard.

Ashleigh1 · ‎September 08, 2022

Hello JPM-TestingSoftware, thanks for commenting on this post, and leaving your feedback, we will be sure to pass on this feedback to the developers.

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Import your customers and suppliers list to QuickBooks