Overview of importing Customers

In QuickBooks Online customers lists are used to store the details of individuals and companies that you sell product and services to. You can import customers lists from text, Excel and IIF files into QuickBooks Online using Zed Axis.

The benefits of using Zed Axis as opposed to importing directly into QuickBooks Online include:

Import Customer with Jobs up to five levels deep (ie. Parent:Customer:Job:Sub Job:Sub Job )
Import many more fields such as Shipping Address, Sales Terms, Payment Methods, Currency and Delivery details

Notes:

Need to import projects into QuickBooks? This is possible but you need to first import as Jobs (sub-customers) then you can use the QuickBooks Online Job to Project conversion process.

Modifying existing Customers - if you need to modify existing Customer records then you must make sure that the FullyQualifiedName field matches what is in QuickBooks and you must include not only the field you are updating but also all the existing fields as if they are not mapped then QuickBooks will overwrite them with an empty value (ie NULL) - sorry this is odd but QuickBooks has been designed this way. Tip you can use the Zed Axis - Export module to export the Customer list with all data fields and then use Excel to modify the data fields you need updated prior to reimporting the data.

Steps to import customers

To import using Zed Axis please follow these steps:

Open Zed Axis and connect to your QuickBooks Online company file
Once connect click on the Import module
Open the Excel, text or IIF file that contains the Customer details that you want to import into QuickBooks Online.
Next create a map between the columns in your import file and the corresponding fields in QuickBooks, for more information on the fields refer to the table at the end of this article.
Finally click the Import button and Axis will import the customers and details directly into QuickBooks Online

More help?

Here is a Customers sample file that you can use to test

Where the fields appear in QuickBooks Online

Detailed description of the fields you can map to

QuickBooks Field	Format	Description
Given Name	str 25	First name of the individual
Middle Name	str 25	Middle name
Title	str	Title of the person
Family Name	str 25	Family name of individual
Suffix	str 10	Suffix of the name (ie Jr)
Display Name	str 100	The name of the person or organization displayed in QuickBooks Online, must be unique
Fully Qualified Name	str	MANDATORY - Full name of the customer, (ie. Parent:Customer:Job), colon used as separator, last level must be unique
Company Name	str 50	The name of the company or organization
Is Active	bool	Whether customer is enabled in QuickBooiks Online (true or false)
Primary Phone	str 21	Primary telephone number
Alternate Phone	str 21	Alternate telephone number
Mobile	str 21	Mobile telephone number
Fax	str 21	Fax number
Primary Email Addr	str 100	Primary email address, must contain @ and be a standard email address format
Web Addr	str 1000	Web site address
Default Tax Code Ref	str	Default tex code to apply to transactions, must match tax code in QuickBooks Online
Taxable	bool	Whether transactions for customer are taxable (true or false)
Bill Addr....		Billing Address for the customer, more here
Ship Addr...		Shipping Address for the customer, more here
Notes	str 2000	Notes on the customer
Job
Parent Ref
Level
Sales Term Ref	str	Sales Terms for the customer (must match Sales Terms list in QuickBooks Online)
Payment Method Ref	str	Payment method for the customer (must match Payment Method list in QuickBooks Online)
Open Balance		Opening balance when creating customer
Open Balance Date	Date	Date to be used for the opening balance
Currency Ref	Str 3	Currency to be used for transactions for this customer (must match currency ie United States Dollar, Canadian Dollar, GBP, AUD, EUR)
Preferred Delivery Method	Enum	Preferred delivery method (possible values are Print, Email or None)
Resale Num	str 15	Resale number or additional info
Secondary Tax Identifier	Str	(UK and IN only). Equivalent to UTR No in UK or CST Reg No. in India
GSTIN	Str	(IN only) GSTIN is an identification number assigned to every GST registered business
Business Number	Str	Also called, PAN (in India) is a code that acts as an identification for individuals, families and corporates, especially for those who pay taxes on their income
Bill With Parent	Bool	Whether the job is billed with it parent (true or false)
Balance With Jobs
Is Project
Primary Tax Identifier	Str	The Tax identifier of Tax Registration Number for the Company or Individual, (only for UK, CA, AU or IN)
GST Registration type	Str	For filing of the GSTR classification for the Customer. Possible values: GST_REG_REG, GST_REG_COMP, GST_UNREG, CONSUMER, OVERSEAS, SEZ, DEEMED.(only for IN)
Print On Check Name	Str 110	Name of the person or organization as printed on a check.
Tax Exemption Reason Id	Num	The tax exemption reason associated with the customer, only if Sales Tax enabled. Possible values 1 - Federal government 2 - State government 3 - Local government 4 - Tribal government 5 - Charitable organization 6 - Religious organization 7 - Educational organizatoin 8 - Hospital 9 - Resale 10 - DIrect pay permit 11 - Multiple points of use 12 - Direct mail 13 - Agriculatural production

Article ID: 272, Created: 5/26/2015 at 5:59 AM, Modified: 8/6/2024 at 7:46 AM

Feedback

I am trying to import a Customer List and all fields map except for the BillState. The values of the field have been CA and NV, so they are formatted correctly. All other fields in the file import except for this one and there is no error on the import log.
Cira Jones (4/25/2016 at 1:12 PM)

Hi Cira, We have updated version 12 of Zed Axis and this issue is now resolved.
Steve (5/2/2017 at 6:45 AM)

If I already have the Customer/Job names loaded but just want to import other related data to that customer is that possible?
Nathan Benn (7/14/2019 at 3:44 PM)

Yes you can add or update the Customer details as long as you use the Fully Qualified Name to match up to the correct existing Customer in QuickBooks Online.
Steve (7/18/2019 at 12:03 AM)

Import customer lists into QuickBooks Online