In Quickbooks Desktop I need it to allow the sales order number to be as long as an ebay or amazon order number I think they are like 17 Characters, how do I change this in preferences? 

Hi Gualala,

The S.O. No. field can accommodate 11 characters and spaces. Currently, we have no option to increase the limit.

As a workaround, you can use the Other field as an S.O. No. field on your sales order. It can accommodate more than 17 characters and spaces, and it allows you to input a letter and number combination. Once added, you can hide the original S.O. No. field.

1. Open a sales order.
2. Click the Formatting tab.
3. Select the Customize Data Layout button.
4. Put a checkmark in the Screen and Print checkboxes of the Other header.
   
5. Click OK to save your changes.

Your SO No will look like this one:

Please note that even if you'll enter sales order numbers in the Other field (new SO No field), the reports will still use the data on the original field. Example: When look at the Transactions of a customer, the NUM will still use the data from the original field. QuickBooks will automatically assign a number in chronological order.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have additional questions.

Just give up.  They want you to give up.  Accept defeat.  Move along.  The canned responses about wanting to help should clue you in; there is no hope.  I hate Intuit.  I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.  

I would love the ability to have longer character fields.  Our current concern is the invoice number.  We have multiple jobs under a single customer and are having issues getting the invoice numbers to coincide with what we want them to look like.

You can customize the invoice number in your QuickBooks Desktop (QBD) software base on your preference, @KathrynW.

You can do so by manually editing it from the invoice page. I’ve attached an image for visual reference. 

I'm also adding this article that you can use for reference in personalizing your invoice. This way, you can control the information on what your customer can see on their invoice: Use and customize form templates.

Need to learn some tips and tricks managing your QBDT effectively? We have lots of articles that can guide you. Visit our QuickBooks Support page and browse a topic from there.

Let me know if you have other queries about QBDT. I’ll be around to answer them for you. Take care.

I agree with this post 100%.  It seems ridiculous to me that you’re only allowed 7 digits for an Account when companies want to re-structure their chart of accounts to have GL codes like 7700-70-00 for example. 9 or 10 digits would be a lot more beneficial than 7. I’m giving my feedback as this will cause people to stop using Quickbooks as their operations grow. Let me know if the digit limit will ever be increased  

I can be added as another person in support of higher character limits for fields in Quickbooks Desktop. A lot of our vendors use invoice numbers that are longer than the character limit imposed by Quickbooks.

To add a note of irony to the situation, the monthly invoices from Intuit for my Quickbooks subscription have 13 characters. We pay them via credit card. The reference number in the credit card entry form can only handle 11 characters.

Thanks for reaching out to the Community, BradVP.
 

I can certainly understand how being able to enter more characters in a given field could be useful to yourself and others. One of my colleagues to most recently submit feedback about this, MariaSoledadG, did so on January 15, 2020. I've additionally sent a suggestion to our developers as of today.
 

If you'd like to present your own product suggestions, you can send them while signed in.

Here's how:

1. In the top menu bar, go to Help, Send Feedback Online, then Product Suggestion....
2. Choose a Type of Feedback and Product Area (optional) from the available drop-down menus.
3. Enter any suggestions/feedback in your Here is my suggestion: field.
4. You'll have an option to include a name/email in the My name is: (optional) and My e-mail address is: (optional) fields.
5. Select Send Feedback.
   

Your feature requests are definitely valuable to Intuit. They go directly to our Product Development Team and will be considered in future updates.
 

You can stay up-to-date with the latest news about new features by reviewing our QuickBooks Blog.
 

I'll be here to help if there's any questions. Have a lovely day!

@BradVP -  Haha, that is funny.  They should definitely fix that situation of incompatibility.  Looks bad.

I want to have more info in the header report I have generated.  I have the name of my church in a contribution report but I also wanted to show the address, city and zip code of the church below the name.  I have been unable to do this.

BARCODE FIELD IS WAY TOO SMALL!
Many of the barcodes on products we stock in our warehouse are longer than the 30 characters that QB Enterprise allows.  Please increase the length of this field to 50 characters!  The mobile warehouse app on the TC20 device will read these long barcodes but since we can't put more than 30 in QB enterprise we are blocked from utilizing the barcodes in pick-pack-ship, cycle counts, inventory receipts on a large percentage of the items we stock and sell.  Frustrating!

BARCODE FIELD IS WAY TOO SHORT!

QB enterprise only allows 30 characters in the barcode field.  Many of the items we stock/ sell have barcodes that are much longer.  The mobile warehouse app on the TC20 device will read the long barcodes but since QB Enterprise wont allow them we are blocked from using pick-pack-ship, cycle counts, inventory receipts by barcode for a large percentage of the items we sell. Please increase the character length of the barcode field to 50 characters!!!

Hello,

I need to change the font on our company name, or change the letters to lower case.

Hello, teresay. 

I'm here to provide some details about changing the font of your company name or change the letters to lower case in QuickBooks Desktop. 

Changing the format is super easy and beautifies your form in QBDT. This is because QuickBooks want's to ensure that you can customize each part of your program and make it presentable at your end. To change the company name fort and letters, Let's go to the Company and select My Company. Then click the pencil icon and from there modify your company name.  

Additionally, In QuickBooks Desktop, there is a maximum number of characters that can be fit in. To learn more about these limitations, please check out this article: Character limitations for fields in QuickBooks.

Reach out to me if you have additional concerns or need further assistance. It's always my pleasure to help. Have a good one and stay safe!

I use Quickbooks online often and recently discovered the custom fields are limited to a certain amount of characters.  For the first one, I created a custom field for email addresses because I want them to appear on printed invoices. However, some email addresses are too long to fit.

For the second one, I only found out today in the Notes tab inside the Customer Information dialog box the characters are limited.  I use the notes tab a lot! This is how we track history of work for our customers and now I have to resort to a spreadsheet or something which is just unnecessary extra steps. 

Is there any way to lengthen this field?

Thanks for joining this thread, @Rebecca77. 

Custom and Notes fields have a 30 and 4095 character limit, respectively. Being able to enter more characters in a given field would be helpful. It takes out any unnecessary steps like using a spreadsheet as an alternative. Rest assured that I'll relay this message to our team in concern here on my end and add your vote for this one.

I'm also linking these resources for more information:

• Character limitations for fields in QuickBooks
• Create and edit custom fields in QuickBooks Online Advanced

You can also share your thoughts and ideas through your account. Our product development team reviews all the feedback we receive to ensure we’re meeting the needs of our customers. 

Here's how:

1. Select the Gear icon at the top, then Feedback.
   
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions then select Next.
3. You'll be provided a list of suggested Help articles related to your comment. You can read through them or select Skip and send message.
4. From the drop-down, choose the appropriate category, then select Send message.

For your reference, check out this link: How to Submit Feedback. To learn more about recent improvements, news, and product enhancements, visit the QuickBooks Blog. You’ll also get suggestions on how to grow the business.

Drop me a line if you need more help with customizing your sales forms in QuickBooks Online. I'd be happy to assist you. Thanks again for reaching us and have a great day.

@LieraMarie_A  Thank you for responding with your helpful information. I truly appreciate it :)  Please, however, pass on in the information that when improvements are made, I find they are largely done for the ONLINE users, and not the DESKTOP users. I am a DESKTOP user and I need these character fields to be longer in MY version please. Of course, it would be better to have this improvement in BOTH versions, but specifically most of the support topics I read on are tailored to ONLINE users only. It's hard to keep finding information for DESKTOP users like myself. 

Wow 2 years and not fixed. Yet developers are able to update pop up ads constantly, that do not respond to the "do not see again" button. 

I am trying to print a customized report to show all customer transactions, but the descriptions and memo fields are truncated on my report.  How can I get that data that is in the QB desktop system onto a report or a special download. 

I read this entire post and it is very ridiculous that there are such limitations OR that they are typed into QB, but not showing on reports!!! 

I already know how to customize a report, and provide feedback for future suggestions to product upgrades, and we are in the most current version with the most current updates!!  So please do not suggest all of those as were done in the prior posts.

Thanks!

But can you make it longer than 11 characters?!

Welcome to the Community, @TF19.

If you are referring to the email address and the notes field, yes, you can enter more than 11 characters. You can add up to 30 characters for the email address and 4095 for the notes.

I'm adding these links as your reference about character limitations:

• Character limitations for fields in QuickBooks
• Create and edit custom fields in QuickBooks Online Advanced

Let me know if you have questions about feature preference in QuickBooks Online. I'm always here to help. Have a great day.

So 5 years has passed since the first post and still the invoice field only allows for 11 characters. Very fast support.

They want everyone on QBO. I don't know if this problem is also on that platform, but, if it is, I doubt they fixed it there.