How to merge customers in QuickBooks

Clear the way first. Neither profile can have sub-customers, and in QuickBooks a project linked to a customer counts as one. Change any sub-customers into regular customers, and take any projects off the customer, or the merge can't go ahead.

Decide which profile stays and which one is the duplicate. Everything on the duplicate moves into the profile you keep, so this choice decides where the combined history ends up.

Rename the duplicate before you merge. Intuit suggests editing its display name to add a word such as duplicate or dupe, so the two profiles are easy to tell apart when you pick names during the merge.

Be certain, because there's no way back from a merge. If the aim is only to get a customer out of your lists, making them inactive is a different task: it keeps their own transactions with them and can be reversed later, which a merge can't.

1. Go to All apps, select Customer Hub, then select Customers & leads.
2. Open the duplicate, the customer profile you don't want to keep.
3. Select the dropdown next to Edit and choose Merge contacts.
4. Write down the Display name that's shown.
5. In the Into dropdown, change the name so it exactly matches the customer profile the duplicate is merging into, the one you're keeping.
6. Select Merge contacts.

All the duplicate's data moves into the profile you kept, and the duplicate's transactions are added to that profile's transaction history. From then on the kept profile carries both customers' activity under one name.

QuickBooks then deletes the merged customer from your records. Intuit explains that this means saving it as inactive, which is how QuickBooks treats every customer it deletes. The inactive profile is empty: if you make it active again, its transaction history stays blank, because the transactions now belong to the other profile.

The merge can't be undone. To see the old profile in the list, open the settings icon above the customer list and tick Include inactive.

If QuickBooks won't merge the two, look again for sub-customers and projects on both profiles, since either one blocks a merge. Projects also stop a customer being made inactive until they're deleted.

Not certain the two profiles are the same customer? Making one inactive instead hides it from your lists and menus while its data stays available in reports, where its transactions show with (deleted) beside the name. That can be reversed: tick Include inactive in the list settings, find the customer and select Make active in the Action column.