Can a customer be a vendor as well? How do you differentiate?

Hello there, wirenutskh. Let me share some information about the customer and a vendor in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

In QBO, a customer can also be a vendor. To differentiate between vendors and customers, vendors sell goods or provide services, while customers buy products or services from a company.

QuickBooks treats vendors, customers, and employees separately. However, it's possible to have customers who are also vendors by adding a special character or any distinction to their profiles. Also, you can mark a particular customer as inactive and consider them as a vendor in the future. To proceed, you can follow the steps below:

Create a new Vendor name (Make sure that this name doesn't have a duplicate)

1. Go to the Expenses tab and select Vendors.
2. Click the New Vendor option.
3. In the Full Name field, enter a name with one keystroke different from the Customer name ( for example, if the Customer name is Cust Mer, make it as Cus T. Mer as Vendor name).
4. Enter the additional contact information.
5. Click Save.

After that, let's Run a Transaction List by Customer report:

1. Go to the Reports tab on the Menu page.
2. From the search dropdown, choose Transaction List by Customer report.
3. Click on Switch to classic view.
4. Edit the Report Period to All Dates and Run Report.
5. Locate each transaction linked to the customer and save them to the new Vendor name.
6. After you've finished editing or adding all the transactions, you can now delete the Customer name.

Please refer to this article for more guidance: Moving names from one list to another in QuickBooks Online.

Furthermore, you can check out this article to learn how to transfer your customer or vendor lists from Outlook, Excel, Gmail, or Google Sheets: Import customers or vendors from email contacts to QuickBooks Online.

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions about customers, vendors, or other QuickBooks-related queries. We're more than happy to assist. Take care.

Thank you CarlSJ for answering my question. I have done just as you explained, I just thought there might be a better way. Your explanation changes a customer to a vendor. I need to keep the customer and add them as a vendor.

Karl

wirenutskh

Thank you CarlSJ. I have done just as you mentioned. Your answer changes a customer to a vendor with a minor name change. I thought there might be a better way. I need to add the customer to the vender list and keep the customer.

Karl

wirenutskh

Thank you for the follow-up message and for sharing additional information on how to add customers to the vendor list in QuickBooks Online (QBO), @wirenutskh.

I'd also like to provide further clarification on the process so that users can choose the most suitable method to distinguish between customers and vendors with the same name.

As my colleague mentioned above, in QuickBooks Online, a customer can also be a vendor, but they are treated as separate entities within the system. To prevent any confusion during transactions, it is advisable to assign unique names to customers and vendors. You can use naming conventions such as adding "-C" following the customer's name or other special characters like (v) or (c) at the end of the person's last name.

In case you need to merge your customers and vendors, you can check this article for the detailed steps: How to merge accounts, customers, and vendors.

I'm also adding these articles for more info about managing list elements such as accounts, classes, products or services, customers or vendors, etc:

• How to edit customer information
• Vendors overview

Feel free to reach out to us anytime if there's anything else we can do to help you out with QuickBooks. We're always here to assist you and ensure your business runs smoothly. Have a great day, @wirenutskh.

Why don't you simply say that A customer can NOT be a vendor at the same time? We have to give a different name. This is it. Again, the question is A single entry for a customer, without adding any other letter or special character; this customer can be a vendor or not. The answer is no. We have to make two entries to QB, one for the customer and one for the vendor.

I see this on QB forums too often. As users, we ask a simple, straightforward question, and the responses are not as straight as we expected them to be.