Question

Trying to understand.... Why would the quickbooks online developers make it impossible to make a customer inactive when they have completed projects assigned to them?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 23, 2019
6 replies
63 views

Making customers inactive seems perfectly logical when they're no longer your customer. However, it is not possible to do this if you've used projects to track income and expenses for the work you did for that customer. If there are ANY projects assigned to a customer (completed, canceled, or otherwise), you'll get the following message when you try to make the customer inactive: "Can't make customer inactive. You need to delete the projects linked to the customer before you can make it inactive." Just how dumb is that?? I went through the trouble of tracking everything at the project level for very good reasons. I don't want to lose that. I just want to make the customer inactive. I can always "revive" them later if they become a customer again. You shouldn't have to change your accounting in order to make a customer inactive.

QuickBooks Online

R

Rasa-LilaM

QuickBooks Team

Thanks for dropping by the Online Community, sskinman.

I appreciate sharing your thoughts about inactivating a customer with projects. I can see your point on that and let me share some insights about this.

You’ll receive the prompt once a customer has projects. This message is a reminder that you lose transactions when you continue with the process.

Adding more control changing the customers’ status is a great idea. That said, I'll be sending feedback to our Product Development Team based on this interaction.

Product updates and enhancements are the results of comments provided by users. While I do that, I encourage submitting this product suggestion on your end.

That way, our development engineers will receive multiple suggestions of how beneficial this feature would be. To submit, simply go to the Gear icon, then select Feedback.

That should point you in the right direction. You can also check what's new about the product through there: The QuickBooks Blog.

Let me know if you have any other concerns or questions about QBO. I'll be right here to help. Have a good one.

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sskinmanAuthor

I have done as you suggest - and submitted my feature request.

Thank you.

J

JanyRoseB

Level 5

Thanks for getting back to us, @sskinman.

Finding new ways to adapt to our customers’ needs is how QuickBooks gets even better. I appreciate you for sending feedback which helps our Product Development team decide which feature will be implemented on the next future update. The change is also based on how popular a specific feature request is.

I can see how this feature would be beneficial to your business, and I'm preparing a feedback submission to our Product Development Team right now.

Please know that you're always welcome to post here in the QuickBooks Community. We're always got your back. Have a good one.

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Surveyor12

We have exactly the same issue and it is so frustrating its untrue. I don't want to delete the projects or the customer just make numerous inactive!! It was so easy on the desktop version. Quickbooks have gone backwards on a lot of things and this is one that is right up at the top :/

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rachel12_2

Us too! I like the projects feature because profitability on individual jobs is critical in our industry to ensure we are profitable as a company. However, it makes absolutely ZERO sense to make projects available and then not be able to inactivate customers when their account is paid in full. I've also submitted feedback. Maybe if we all submit the request once a week, they'll fix this!!!

T

tiniblah

New Member

Dealing with the same situation. Please fix ASAP.

SevenClark

Seems to still be the same issue today May 2020. I also don't understand why this has not been improved or fixed.

I do have another solution/workaround that seems to do what you want without having to mess with the status of a project. In the Sales --> Customer tab. All the client's are listed with a check box next to the name. Put a check in the box of the client you want to inactive. Then go to the top of the screen to the drop down button labelled 'Batch Actions' and select 'Make inactive'. This will then make the client inactive. Simple enough that you would think Quickbooks would have this same process for when you inactivate the client in the profile. Is that not all we are asking for?

However for me if you try and inactivate more then one client in the batch action I get an error. Also seems like another bug since the whole idea of a batch process is to allow you to complete it with multiple clients.

I hope this works for you.

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Natalietuman

THANK YOU, Seven Clark! Worked perfectly.

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Snowdenfarm

Same issue.

I understand from comments above that they are not permanently deleted and can be re-activated. The issue is that QBO does not give my office manager permission to change the status of Projects. She cannot even see them in a useable format like I see them.

I also understand from comments above that she could do it from batch actions. However, the possibility of remembering that is a possibility when she always inactivates from the customer's edit menu is close to null. If you can do it through batch actions, we surely should be able to do it from the edit menu.

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ChristieAnn 11

Level 9

Hi there, Snowdenfarm.

I appreciate you for posting your concern here in QuickBooks Community. I'll provide information about user permission in QuickBooks Online.

There are different user types and levels of access to QuickBooks. That said, it could be your office manager is set into Reports only user. To verify and to fix this, I'd suggest checking the user settings of your manager from the Manage Users page. Then, change it into Standard or Company admin user. Please note that to do this, you'll need to have Admin access.

Here's how:

Select the Gear icon and choose Manage Users.
Find the user and check their status in the UserType column. Once confirm that the type is Reports only, click Edit in the Action column.
In the window that appears, choose the User type drop-down ▼ menu, select the user type you want them to be.
When you finish, select Save. Ask the user to sign out and then sign in to see the changes.

For additional information, you can click this article: Add, delete, or change user access.

On the other hand, yes, you're correct! you must surely be able to do it from the edit menu aside from clicking the Batch action when inactivating customers.

Please refer to this article to see different information about Projects in QuickBooks Online: Projects FAQ.

That should get you fixed right up. Keep me posted on how everything goes in the comment section. I want to make sure this is taken care of for you.

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Snowdenfarm

Thank you for your reply. My office manager is set up as an "Office User" which gives her access to: All sales transactions and customers, sales and customer reports, expense and vendors reports, all expense transactions and vendors, and bank deposits.

She cannot see the same Projects view that I see and she cannot delete a Project. She also denied access to run a report on a product/service within the Products and Services list -- though she can do that through Reports. Ironically, she is denied access to a shared, customized Product/Services report I created and shared with everyone. She is also denied access to the Physical Inventory Report. All of which certainly seem like they should be accessible through her "Office User" permissions.

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