Update customer information by importing

Hello Luke55,

I’d like to give you some insight on this.

It is absolutely possible to export your customer information and import it back into QuickBooks Online. However, imported lists will not replace the old information but will add up to the existing lists on file. Having said that, you will need to edit the customer information and merge them.

Therefore, I suggest updating your customer information in QuickBooks Online. This way, it will be less complicated for you.

Here’s how you edit the customer information in QuickBooks Online:

1. Click the Sales tab on the left panel and select Customers sub-tab.
2. Select a customer.
3. Click Edit.
4. Enter your changes as needed. 
5. Click Save.

Let me know if you need more help. I’ll be a few clicks away.

Is this still the only way?  Seems very outdated?  Thanks

Hello, All. 

Thanks for joining into this thread. Allow me to address your concern about updating customer's information, so let me get this straightened out. 

My colleague MarninaM provided the exact details and option on how to edit customer's information in QuickBooks Online. I can see how the feature you're requesting would be helpful to update customer's information conveniently, I encourage you to send feedback directly to our product developers for consideration in the future updates. 

Here's how you can send feedback: 

1. Click the Gear Icon.
2. Select Feedback.
3. Click Next and choose Feedback under Category option.
4. Select Save.

For the meantime, you can check this article for your reference on how to edit customer information.

If you need further assistance with the steps from our phone support, you can contact them through this link: Get help with QuickBooks Online.

Please know that I'm just a post away if you have further questions about customer information and I'll be sure to get back to your right away. Have a great day! 

Hi JanyRoseB,

Can you please give us (a) case study on how people have done this for thousands of customers, or is QBO simply not a good platform if you have more than a few hundred customers?

Please advise, and thank you!

You do realize that this isn't a viable solution if you have hundreds of customers, correct?

Is there anything you know of which other customers have done who're in the same situation?

Hey there, @TFrey.

I appreciate your feedback about updating customer's information by batch. While this isn't available yet, I'll be sure to pass along your request regarding this option directly to our Product Development team. QuickBooks Online is constantly changing and evolving based largely on the suggestions and requests of users, like yourself.

I also encourage you to submit feedback as well so our Product Development team how this option makes your QBO experience smoother. You may follow the steps provided by my colleague @JanyRoseB or visit this link: QuickBooks Online Feature Requests.

Thanks for being a part of our QuickBooks family. I'm only a post away should you have any follow-up questions. Take care always!

Please bring this feature soon as it's vital to our online store. Customer details are primarily held on our E-Commerce system (which we or they can edit) so each time a repeat order is placed we want to sync the latest invoice address and contact info with QB without having to buy 3rd party apps since we pay for an in-house programmer that can extract the data in CSV format. This procedure worked fine with our old accounting system.

Also please have separate columns for first and last name as well as one for the display name (which we set to the customer's unique account number).

I don't want to sound rude but does QB's purposely hold back on features to help 3rd party app developers make money? Just seems that certain features have bits missing that make no sense.

Hi there, @nssimpson.

Thanks for joining this thread. I appreciate your time to share your feedback about updating customer's information in QuickBooks Online.

I hear you realize the importance that this can have on your business. Sending your feedback online is a big help for us to determine the features that need to be added to our product. At this time, I'll do my part and raise this concern to our Developers so this will be taken care of.

Please know that the Community is always here if you need assistance with QuickBooks. We're always here to help. Wishing you and your business continued success. 

We can discuss the cost to you over the phone, nssimpson.

Please give us a call so we can calculate how much the total cost is and record the interaction in your account.

Here's how to get our contact number: 

1. Go to this link https://help.quickbooks.intuit.com/en_US/contact.
2. Select QuickBooks Online.
3. Click the Account management topic.
4. Click the Manage subscriptions sub-topic.
5. Scroll down and click the Get Phone Number button.

Please feel free to drop by if you need more help with QuickBooks. Happy holidays! 

Thanks for getting back to me, nssimpson.

Since QBO is constantly changing, we can't really tell what features are still missing. With that being said, the cost will still depend on each third-party, and how many apps you'll integrate with QBO. You can contact each provider to get an estimated cost if you decide to use multiple apps.

To learn more about the recent changes in QuickBooks Online, you can refer to this article: What's new in QuickBooks Online (2018 Releases).

I'll be right here if you have any follow-up questions.

I'm pretty sure Saasant isn't an option either. I use Saasant for importing invoices and it works great however I tried to update customers through Saasant and received the same error...that record was a duplicate.

I used desktop version of Quickbooks for years and batch update vendors/customers/employees was always possible.

Let's hope Intuit can fix this shortcoming in QBO.

Hi, ashevillerowing.

Allow me to share some information about updating customers via the third-party application.

Your time is valuable to us, as well as the ability for you to update customers through the third-party application. I can assure you that the engineering team is looking into this and hope to soon have more information regarding this update issues. I'll share your feedback with them to let them know about the changes you'd like to see made.

We aren't able to tell when a feature will be available. We share recent happenings and future developments on our blog. Through this, you're able to get the latest news about QuickBooks and what our Product Care Team is working on. 
You can check out this link: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/blog/.

For additional help, you can call our dedicated team who will be happy to assist you. Our contact details can be found here along with our opening hours.

I wish you and your business continued success. I'm here if you have any other questions.

How do you export customer information?  There is no export function that I can see.

I'm the right person to help you export customer information, @Thepiperson.

You have two options to export the customer data, either through the Customer list when you click the Sales menu or running the Customer Contact List report.

First option:

1. On the left menu, click Sales.
2. Go to the Customers tab.
3. Click the Gear icon above the Action column, select the columns you want to add on the list.
4. Click the Export icon.

Second option:

1. On the left menu, click Reports.
2. On the search field, enter and select Customer Contact List.
3. Customize the report if you'd like to add other customer details.
4. Click the Export icon.

For additional insights, you refer to this article: How to export your customer list.

That should help you export the data you need, Thepiperson. I'm still here to help you more if you have other information to export. Just drop a comment below.

Unfortunately, this cannot be achieved in QuickBooks Online, however, this can be achieved by QuickBooks Desktop. Below are the steps to update the email address of the customer in QuickBooks Desktop:

Click Sales, then choose Customers. Choose a customer. Select the Customer Details tab, then click Edit. You can enter the email addresses in the Email field.

Regards,

Dinesh

Apps4Rent.com

I agree with the thousands of subscribers who want this feature. Opening a single customer profile to make a change, then moving on to the next is inefficient and not an ideal solution when you need to update dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of customers.  If I wanted a junior varsity solution, I'd use Xero.  Let's step it up Intuit!  This is a feature that is not only possible but should have been in place long ago.  And, being a developer myself, I know that it is not a difficult fix to add this.  You could literally have it in place in less than a day.

Sage have a good solution to this problem, but they have unique customer codes. By uniquely selecting a customer using the code a user can import changed customer details in a batch.  If the customer exists Sage does an update, else the customer is added using the unique, user generated 8 character customer code.  From a developers view its easy.  With Quickbooks there is the CUSTOMER field and the FULL NAME name field and I'm not sure either is unique! Maybe they are in combination.  When we started using QB I expected Sage like functionality and did some experiments only to find that customer updates done manually produced inconsistent outcomes.  When I thought I was updating an existing customer record sometimes a new one was generated, sometimes not.  I gave up in the end and we simply allow QB to create new customer records when we import invoices from our other systems.  Later we add things like email addresses manually - a right pain!

-Dave Sherwood

I feel the only changes Quickbooks online has are increases to cost and limitations on features. Nothing new seems to have been introduced that would be useful or even help workflows. The site is slow/laggy and to do anything "one at a time" like updating vendors would drive anyone crazy. Quickbooks online has become so basic, I don't understand how companies/enterprises use it for what they need.