Using Custom Fields in QuickBooks

Is there more information you’d like to track about your customers, vendors or employees? Have you tried to collect data? One of the most powerful yet under-utilized tools in QuickBooks is Custom Fields. You can use these fields for names (customers, vendors, employees) and Items. I’ll discuss Custom Fields for names first, and then Items.

For customers, you might want to know how they found out about your company (such as newspaper, radio, flyer, referral), their birthday, favorite team, favorite product, region, type of car, pet, and so on. For vendors, maybe you want their website, area of expertise, or product line. For employees, maybe you want to have their contact name and phone number, date of last raise, date I-9 expires, etc. (In Enterprise Solutions, the Employee Organizer is included and you’ll notice that there are many more fields already there for you to use).

Enterprise Solutions V10 gives you a few more options than with Pro and Premier 2010, such as:

• You can have up to a total of 30 Custom Fields for customer/vendor/employees.


• These fields can be required, which guarantees that employees fill in certain data.


• You can specify the type of data. This is a huge benefit for owners. You can even have a drop-down list so employees can simply choose from a set list. This eliminates inconsistent data entry. Just think of how many ways a person can enter a date, phone number, or name. Any time the data is entered differently, it’s treated as a different entry. Drop-down lists ensure uniformity so that data is not entered in different ways.

To create a Custom Field, click on the Additional Info tab, click on Define. Type in the name you want to appear on the label for the Custom Field (e.g. birthday). Click which list this is for (customer, vendor, employee); you can use it for all three.

Once you create Custom Fields, you can use them in transactional documents (such as sales orders, invoices) and reports. A few comments on using them:

• If the data is entered in the customer/vendor record, then when you add that field to an invoice, sales order or purchase order, the data will automatically fill in. (If you enter that information when creating the document, it will not be stored with the customer/vendor record.


• You can use Custom Fields in the headers of invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, or as a column for the body of the document. I usually recommend using Custom Fields for customers and vendors at the top of the document and in the body of the document for Items.


• When used in actual transactions, such as invoices and sales receipts, you can get additional sales data in reports. So, if “region” was a Custom Field for your customer and it was used it on the header of an invoice, you could generate a report that breaks down sales by region reports.


• When used in customer/vendor/employee records, you can add Custom Fields as a column on list reports.

When it comes to Items, frequently there is more information you want to know about the Item, such as color, size, type of material, number in a pallet or case, expiration date, serial number, lot number, location, and so on. While many users include some of this information in the description, it can be hard track, so having additional fields gives you that tracking capability. Just as you did for names, you can add these additional fields to reports and transactional documents (sales receipts, invoices, purchase orders, etc.). This means you can search and run reports on these fields.

In Enterprise Solutions V10, you can have up to 15 Custom Fields (more than Pro and Premier), more control over the type of data in that field (such as number, text, date), and the ability to designate a Custom Field as “required”. You can even have users select from a drop-down menu to make data entry even more uniform. While this might sound like a nice feature, it becomes very important when you have multiple users entering data. Different people will often enter the same data in different formats. For example, the date might be entered as June 15, 2010, june 15, 2010, or 6/15/10. Inconsistent data entry can make searching or filtering very cumbersome.

To create a Custom Field for an Item, edit the Item, click on Custom Fields, then Define Fields. Give it a name. If you’re in Enterprise, you can choose the type of data for this field, and where it’s to be used – in the actual Item record (list) or transaction, such as Purchase Order or Invoice.

Some comments on using these fields:

• If the data is entered in the Item record, then when you add that Custom Field to an invoice, sales order or purchase order, the data will automatically fill in. If, however, you enter that information in the Custom Field in the document you are creating, it will not be stored with the Item. For instance, if you sell shirts, you might sell 3 red shirts and 4 blue ones. If you have only one item called “shirts”, then you will want to enter the color on the invoice. If you have multiple shirt Items on your list (red shirts, blue shirts, green shirts), then when you select the appropriate shirt, the color will automatically appear on the document.


• You can search and filter for Custom Fields.I mentioned using serial numbers. While QuickBooks won’t let you keep a running list of serial numbers for an Item, if you enter the serial number on the invoice, then you can search on that serial number later if you need.


• When used in actual transactions, such as invoices and sales receipts, you can get additional sales data in reports. You won’t be able to get totals by custom field, (e.g. you could not get a total of blue shirts, but, you can filter on a custom field or you can export the report to Excel and get your totals.


• Since you can’t control how users enter data in Custom Fields in Pro and Premier, here are a couple suggestions:
  
  • In the label for the field, indicate how you want data entered (mm/dd/yyyy).
  
  
  • Rather than filter the report, sort on that field.
  
  

So look at what you’ve been tracking manually or think about what you might like to track and see if using Custom Fields would help.