Merge duplicate customers in QuickBooks Online: find them first

You rename the profile you want to remove so its display name exactly matches the one you keep, then confirm the merge. Intuit’s steps:

1. Go to All apps > Customer Hub > Customers & leads, then the Customers tab.
2. Open the profile you don’t want to keep.
3. Next to Edit, open the menu and choose Merge contacts.
4. Change the Display name to exactly match the profile you keep.
5. Select Save, then Yes.

The merge plan from this tool lists the name to type for every pair, so you work down the list one row at a time.

Export the customer list, then paste it into the tool above.

1. In QuickBooks Online, go to Reports > Standard reports.
2. Search “contact list” and open Customer Contact List.
3. Select Export/Print > Export to Excel.
4. Copy the name, email and phone columns with their header row, and paste them in.

A list kept in Excel or Google Sheets works the same way. Names alone are enough to start.

It cleans each name, then links two rows when any one test matches. Cleaning means lowercase, no punctuation, “&” read as “and”, and Inc, LLC, Co and The removed.

Rule: same if cleaned names match, OR an email matches, OR the last 10 digits of a phone match, OR names are at least 90% alike (85% on the loose setting).

“Alike” is the average of two standard scores, Jaro-Winkler and edit distance. Names with different numbers, like “Store 12” and “Store 13”, never count as alike. An email or phone found on more than 10 rows is treated as a placeholder and skipped.

Example: “Acme Supply Co.” and “ACME SUPPLY, Inc” both clean to “acme supply”, so they match. “Riverbend Property Grp” scores 94% against “Riverbend Property Group” and shares a phone, so the group shows two reasons.

Rows linked through any test land in one group. A group with two or more reasons is the safest place to start. To match one list against another, such as QuickBooks against a CRM, use the fuzzy match tool.

Check for sub-customers, currencies and history before each merge.

• Sub-customers and projects. Intuit says neither profile can have sub-customers, and projects count as sub-customers.
• Currency. Each profile has one currency, so a second profile for a second currency is on purpose.
• History. The merged profile becomes inactive and its transactions move to the one you keep.
• Permanent. Intuit says a merge can’t be undone, so keep the downloaded plan as your record.

Check “Not a duplicate” for any group that fails these checks. It drops out of the merge plan.