Starting with QuickBooks 2010 and Enterprise Solutions 10.0, you can add or edit multiple list entries by clicking on the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries menu selection on the Lists menu.
However, only certain lists can be manipulated with this feature and not all fields on these lists can be modified. These 5 lists can be edited:
- Customers
- Vendors
- Service Items
- Inventory Parts
- Non-inventory Parts
For Customers, 6 fields can’t be manipulated with this tool: Sales Rep, Ship To address, Cc (Email), Preferred Send Method, Price Level, and Preferred Payment Method. In addition, 6 fields can be added for new customers, but can’t be edited for existing customers: Currency, Customer Balance, Opening Balance as of Date, Terms, Tax Code, and Tax Item.
For Vendors, 3 fields can’t be manipulated: Cc (Email), Billing Rate Level, and Accounts to pre-fill transactions. In addition, 3 fields can be added for new vendors, but can’t be edited for existing vendors: Currency, Vendor Balance, and Opening Balance as of Date.
For Inventory Parts, the screen shot below shows the available columns which can be modified. Columns in both the Available Columns and Chosen Columns list can be included. In this example, Shelf and Warehouse represent custom fields, so custom fields can be edited using this technique. At least 1 column can’t be edited for either Inventory or Non-inventory Parts: Unit of Measure.
Similarly, here are the available columns for Non-inventory Parts:
Using this tool, you can choose the columns in the window by clicking the Customize columns… button and use either the Copy/Paste features of Windows or the context menu (discussed below) to quickly duplicate values in a column. You can also create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that exactly matches the column layout you’ve selected for the Add/Edit Multiple List Entries window and paste that spreadsheet into the window to quickly add new list entries.
For editing existing entries, you can access the context menu by right-clicking in a cell to gain access to menu choices to insert a new row, copy the value in existing cell down to all of the rows below it (which will overwrite data), and to duplicate an existing row (to prepare it for further editing).
The Add/Edit Multiple List Entries tool includes data validation to insure that your pasted data is in the format expected by QuickBooks for that data element and that you haven’t attempted to save a duplicate list entry. Data validation is extremely important in a tool that can easily add or modify large amounts of data.
For the first time starting with QuickBooks 2010, QuickBooks users have a tool to easily and safely add or edit multiple list entries from within QuickBooks itself.
I’m cleaning up someone else’s postings, again. Every single vendor is listed as OTHER! Honestly! I need to move all OTHER entries to VENDOR in one go. One at a time doesn’t make sense. Why isn’t this an option?
I have been asked to change the preferred vendor on several inventory items. When I edit using the multiple entry and i choose copy down, will it copy it down to the end of the list, or can I control where to end the new entry?
We need to pull some vendor transactions from the account code where they are right now and put them in a suspense account. They are very old ones and they do not want them to be reflected in the reports… is there a way to change all the transactions account codes for one vendor at once or it has to be changed one at a time?
Is there any way to edit inventory items to non-inventory items within QuickBooks. My client finds it time consuming and difficult to create assemblies within QuickBooks, their cost of goods sold is way off as assemblies have not been created so when sold the cogs is showing zero for those items. They want the items when purchased to go directly to purchases instead of inventory and will track the inventory manually. When I try to edit the items non-inventory it is not an option.
No, that’s not allowed. You’ll need to do a) an inventory adjustment to adjust those inventories to a zero balance; and b) make new non-inventory items and consider making the now zeroed-out inventory items inactive.
I need to change the COGS account on over 800 items to clean up the books. I can easily do this with the feature, but when I attempt to save it brings up a confirmation window for each item.
This does not happen when changing a non-account column. Is there any way to turn of this secondary prompt so I don’t have to sit and click “yes” then wait 30 seconds for each of the 800+ items?
Please!
Unfortunately not. No 3rd party tool comes to mind either. There are programming techniques that can accomplish this, but I suspect that even for 800 items, the cost of creating a custom tool would probably be greater than doing it manually.
Thanks for the prompt reply. Sad news though 🙁
Many of the 800 items are no longer active. Would you recommend changing for only the active items at least, or will loose look more messy on the books when the new items start hitting a different account than the old ones?
In other words, how important is it to change ALL vs only Active items when it comes to the COGS account?
GL accounts come and go over time, so I wouldn’t worry that you have an “old” COGS account and a new one. Personally, I think it is more trouble to edit the inactive items than it’s worth. You can consider a couple of solutions for your financial reporting: 1) put the “old” COGS account AND all other COGS accounts as child accounts of a new parent COGS account; you can create new, child COGS sub-accounts as you need; for financial reporting, you can just report the parent account, which will be the same as if all items had the same COGS account; or 2) change your the COGS account for your active items; at the end of a financial reporting period, see if the COGS account for the inactive items has a balance; if it does, produce a GJE that journals that balance over to the COGS account used on the active items; for financial reporting purposes, this has the same effect as if you changed the COGS account on all 800 items. Approach #1 is easy to implement since you can drag accounts into a child relationship and avoids the hassle of recording a GJE, yet still provides simple financial reporting, so that makes it the preferred choice.
How do i print off customer address list for current yr active customer [using Quick book pro 2011]?
Unfortunately, this isn’t a report that QB can handle easily because you want to combine list elements (customer addresses) with transaction elements (customers who have activity in the current year). Although it can’t be done in QB, you can export 2 reports to Excel and combine them to produce the report you want. First, export a customer address list with all your customer list information to Excel. Next, export a transaction report of customers with activity in the current year to Excel. You could use a summary report since you’re focused on the total, not the transaction details themselves. With the 2 reports in Excel, copy and paste the 1st report (the customer address list) into a new worksheet in the 2nd report (the transaction data). You’ll end up with 1 Excel workbook containing 2 worksheets. Finally, add the address columns to the transaction data worksheet and use Excel Lookup functions to match the customer name in the transaction worksheet to that in the address list.
To accomplish this will take intermediate Excel skills. If you frequently need QB reports that contain a mix of data, these skills will come in handy.
How can we copy the price level to multiple customer list? Instead of changing 1 by 1 per customer. Why cannot the price level be added to the customize column, so it can be easily copy down to multiple customers.
Thanks 🙂
I need to reassign several customers new sales reps. Am I missing something, because I don’t see where this is an option to quickly update in the add/edit multiple list entries function. I have qb for windows 2011.
Good observation. You can’t edit the sales rep for a customer using this tool, because the field isn’t in the list of the Available or Chosen Columns. Click the Customize Columns button to see what columns the tool can manipulate.
We missed the sales rep field in our list of fields that the tool can’t manipulate, but we corrected our post after seeing your comment.