Seattle Small Business Blog

Q: I’m still learning QB, so can you walk me through merging the vendors?

Merging vendors is pretty easy:

• Go into Single User mode
• Then go to the Vendor Center and decide which vendor name you want to keep. I usually go with the one that’s either 1) oldest, or 2) has the most transactions posted to it.
• Double-click on that Vendor’s name in the list, copy the name as it appears in the top-most field of the Edit Vendor window, then close that window.
• Now double-click on the name of the Vendor you don’t want to keep, and paste the copied name into the top-most field. Click OK or Save (whatever the button is called) and QB will ask you to confirm that you want to merge the two Vendors.
• Say yes and you’re done.

The other option is to just make one of them inactive (right click the Vendor’s name in the list and choose “Make Inactive”), but that makes the Vendor’s name disappear from the list in the Vendor Center. If we ever want to see our complete history with that Vendor, we have to remember that there’s a second one that’s inactive, and search for it separately. Most of the time, if you’re looking for historical transactions and you find a Vendor that’s active, you’ll stop there and won’t bother continuing to look for duplicate/inactive Vendors that may provide additional history.

If you merge the two, then you will have all the transactions available to view under just one name, which will stay active and easily viewable without having to take any additional steps. 

-Veronica