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.