How do you delete a customer?

Welcome to the Community, riverdalegutters.

Let me show you how to manage your customers in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

We can make a customer inactive to remove them from lists and menus. All transactions linked with that customer remain on reports even if they are inactive.

Here's how:

1. Go to ​Get paid & pay or Sales, then Customers.
2. Select the customer's name to open their profile.
3. Click on Edit.
4. Select Make inactive and Yes to confirm.

I've added this article for more details in managing customers: Add and manage customers in QuickBooks Online.

You can also use this link to update any information about your customers: Edit customer information.

Please leave another comment if you still need assistance. I'll be here to check on your response. Have a great day!

No !!!

This only makes the Customer Inactive.  It doesn't Delete the Customer.

Let me help clarify how deleting a customer works, KenRea.

In QuickBooks Online (QBO), We can only delete a customer by making them inactive. The inactive customers will not show in the Customer Contact List report.

To help you with future tasks and tips when using QBO, you might want to visit our Help Articles.

Please know that I'm just a reply away if you need any further assistance managing your customer. Have a great day!

So when you say "Delete", you actually mean they're gone because they're Inactive and you can't see them when looking only at Active Customers.

However, they still count as a Name.  I'm trying to Delete Customers to reduce the Total Names that have hit the 14,500 limit.

Is there No other QB procedure or 3rd party software that can "Scrub" the QB database to easily delete Customers and their associated items?

Otherwise, like I've done at least 6 times in the last 17 years, I manually delete the Deposits of payments for old Customers, then delete their Invoices, Payments, Jobs and finally the Customer.

Welcome back, KenRea.

For every type of QuickBooks Online (QBO) subscription, there is a specific usage limit. If you wish to reduce the usage limit, you can do the following:

• Delete an account user.
• Make an account active in Chart of Accounts.
• Delete classes/locations.
• Delete a tag.
• Disconnect a sales channel.

You can visit this article to learn more about the usage limit in QBO: Learn about usage limits in QuickBooks Online.

Also, the 14,500 limit for total names is available in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). Check out this article for more information: Maximum number of list entries (list limits and custom fields)

Since delete permanently is not an available option in QBO, I would appreciate if you can send your thoughts of having this feature within your company file:
 

1. Select the Gear icon at the top, then Feedback.
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions.
3. Then select Next to submit feedback.

Your valuable feedback goes to our Product Development team to help improve your experience in QBO. You can track feature requests through the QuickBooks Online Feature Requests website.

Should you need help while working with customer names in QuickBooks, just let me know in the comment section below. I'm always here to further assist. 

I'm still using QB Desktop Pro 2017 and I need a Desktop solution to delete customers.

Renaming and merging unwanted Jobs and Customers is an interesting suggestion,

Thank you for joining the thread, @KenRea.

I've come to help manage your jobs and customers in QuickBooks Desktop.

Firstly, you can only delete a customer when there are no transactions associated with it. Here's how:

1. Open your QuickBooks Desktop company file.
2. Go to the Customers menu, then select Customer Center.
3. Find the customer you want to delete, Then, right-click and select Delete Customer:Job.
4. Click OK to confirm.

However, if your customers had transactions, you can make them inactive. To do so, you can follow the steps below:

1. Go back to the Customer Center.
2. Select the customer to open their profile.
3. At the left-side bottom of the window, put a checkmark on the Customer is inactive checkbox.
4. Click Yes to confirm.

Secondly, you can simply open the customer or job's profile and change the customer name on the field. Once done, click OK to save the settings.

Lastly, you can go to the List menu to merge a customer list. For more guidance, feel free to check out this article: Merge list entries in QuickBooks Desktop.

Come back to this post and let me know how it goes, @KenRea. I want to make sure this is taken care of.

You may want to run and customize reports in QuickBooks Desktop. This will help you view all your sales transactions for each customer.

Wishing you all the best!

Merging Customers didn't work.

If 2 Customers have Jobs, when I rename the 2nd Customer to the first one's name, I get "This name already in use and cannot be merged.  Names with subnames cannot be merged."

Back to Manually Deleting Deposits, then Payments, then Invoices, then Jobs, then finally Customers.

Isn't there a better way ???

Thank you for sharing this helpful workaround, KenRea. 

Currently, we're unable to merge customers that have sub-customer. I suggest you'll need to go into each transaction for that particular sub-customer and change it to parent customer. To do so, follow these steps below:

1. Right-click the name of the customer that you would like to merge, then select Edit Customer.
2. Replace the customer name with the one you took note of or copied, then select OK.
3. A prompt will appear, select Yes to proceed with the merge.

Also, I agree with your workaround. The maximum number of total names in QuickBooks Pro is 14,500. If you've reached the maximum number of entries and require more, you'll need to manually delete some customers combined. 

QuickBooks doesn't have an option to delete multiple customers at once. We can only delete a customer by making them inactive. By doing this, the system will automatically create adjusting entries to zero out your customer's balance thus will affect your financial records.

On the other hand, you may check out our app site and look for a third-party application to help you with the process. Here's how:

1. Go to our Apps for QuickBooks Desktop page.
2. Open the All Applications tab.
3. In the search field, enter something like '' Delete Customers to their associated items''.
4. Click the Search button.

After that, you'll be able to merge the two names successfully. For an additional guide, you can open this article: Merge list entries in QuickBooks Desktop.

Additionally, here's a link that'll help you manage customer-related tasks. It has out general customer topics with articles: Sales and customers.

You can click the reply button below if you need further assistance in merging your customers in QuickBooks Desktop. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.