Differentiating Customers and Vendors in QuickBooks

Question: I have a vendor who has become a customer. QuickBooks will not let me use the same name. What do I do?

Answer: You can use a variation of the name, such as "ABC Company" for the customer and "ABC Company Inc." for the vendor.

Alternatively, you can do something as simple as adding a period at the end of the name for one or the other. QuickBooks will look at the two names as different names. For instance, your customer could be "ABC Company" and your vendor could be "ABC Company." to differentiate the two names.

QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at hgatter@accountingsupportllc.com

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