For the 2010 version (QuickBooks 2010 and Enterprise Solutions 10.0), Intuit has increased the number of custom fields and provided for data validation in Enterprise Solutions. Compared to 2009, the number of custom fields for Names increased from 7 (out of 15) to 12 (out of 30), and for Items it increased from 5 to 15.
QuickBooks 2010 and Enterprise Solutions 10.0 support up to 30 total custom fields for Names which can be applied to a combination of Customers:Jobs, Vendors, or Employees, provided that no more than 12 custom fields apply to any 1 type of list.
In addition, QuickBooks 2010 and Enterprise Solutions 10.0 support up to 15 custom fields for Items.
Enterprise Solutions 10.0 extends data validation to custom fields by allowing you to specify the type of data a custom field should contain and whether the fields are required on Transactions and Lists. Data types include 1 generic text format, 3 number formats, 5 date formats, 2 phone number formats, and a multi-choice list, which allows you to create a pull-down list of entries.
In Enterprise Solutions 10.0, the Multi-choice List contains list elements you specify, and you can select whether the list can only contain these elements or user-entered text. In all cases, custom fields are subject to a 30 character limit.
QuickBooks 2009 and Enterprise Solutions 9.0 support up to 15 total custom fields for Names, which can be applied to a combination of Customers:Jobs, Vendors, or Employees, provided that no more than 7 custom fields apply to any 1 type of list (i. e., Customers:Jobs, Vendors, and Employees). For example, you could create 7 custom fields unique to Customers:Jobs and a different set of 7 unique custom fields for Vendors. Then, you’d have the ability to create 1 additional custom field which could be used only for Employees.
Custom fields are limited to 30 characters. You can’t control the amount of text entered in a screen form, but you can limit the amount that is printed on a printed form. Except in Enterprise Solutions 10.0, custom fields are text entry boxes that accept any character. You can’t control the data entered with pull-down lists or other data type restrictions. Because data entered into custom fields is essentially unrestricted, care must be taken during data entry if these fields are to be used for filtering data; an apparently small change in data recorded for a custom field could result in many records not being found when applying a filter.
Custom fields for Customers:Jobs can be used for data in the header or footer of forms such as invoices and receipts.
In addition, in the 2009 version, QuickBooks supports up to 5 custom fields for Items.
Custom fields for Items can be used for data in the section for line items (i. e., the columnar section below the header) on forms such as invoices and receipts.
Interesting – I imported, via IIF, 10 custom fields in addition to other pre-defined fields and ALL data came in. We were using 12, not having updated to 13 yet until the fiscal year books were settled.
Our company is using Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions 13.0. We need to import a large item list with 13 custom fields. Does .IIF import limit to 5 custom fields?
I tried to add CUSTFLD6, etc… but only the CUSTFLD1 through CUSTFLD5 data imported – the other fields imported with nothing. The excel import mapping allowed mapping with no errors, but nothing imported. Any suggestions?
Unfortunately, the answer is more complicated than you might like. You can’t do what you want to do with an IIF import, and for large data imports, we wouldn’t recommend that approach anyway. You’d be better served by using import tools built with Intuit’s SDK (software developer’s kit). Tools based on the SDK allow safer access to the QB database; the access is usually more complete. That is, it gives access to more of the fields in the QB database.
Intuit hasn’t released the SDK for the QB 2013 series of products, and it probably won’t do so until about the time R4 of the 2013 series is released. Since the 2013 SDK hasn’t been released, I can’t say whether it will support 13 custom fields or not. I can say that until the SDK is released, some of the new fields for 2013 (such as multiple customer contacts) can’t be accessed via SDK-based tools. Tools built on the previous version of the SDK support didn’t support the increased number of custom fields on prior versions of ES. We haven’t yet had a chance to try those tools on ES 13.
Bay State Consulting’s Transaction Pro Importer is the tool we’d recommend if you want to try the task on your own. TPI will be subject to the limits of the SDK, since that’s what it’s based on. Hope that helps.