Various aspects of your QuickBooks company file can display duplicate entries because of inconsistent methods used to enter data or, in some cases, known bugs within the software. Correcting these issues generally involves finding the duplicates and removing them from the register or list. Commonly duplicated items include transactions, employee and customer records, and duplicates when printing certain reports.

Downloaded Transactions

Transactions may get entered twice into the register when you download your transaction activity from your bank and manually re-enter the transaction into the register. The Online Banking Center section of QuickBooks provides a way to remove duplicate entries. Use the Register mode or the Side-By-Side mode depending on which view you feel more comfortable working with. Register mode shows the transactions in a typical register, while Side-By-Side mode shows your accounts on one screen along with the transactions on another. Choose the transactions to delete to clear up any duplicates.

Customer Duplicates

Customer entries must get inputted the same way each time one of your employees enters the information into QuickBooks. Slight variations can cause you to create more than one account for the same customer. You may also accidentally import a customer list with information that closely matches an already existing customer. To remove the duplicates, merge the customer to avoid losing information. Once in Point of Sale, select the customer record that you want to merge and select "I Want To" and click "Merge." Edit the customer record and select the record with the information you want to keep. After making any necessary edits, click "Merge Customers" to initiate the combining of the two accounts.

Employee Duplicates

Employee records might get duplicated when you clicked the "Save & Next" or "Save & Close" button instead of the "Cancel" button while adding a new employee. Provided the employee doesn't have any payroll transactions associated with the account, you can merge the duplicate employee records. In the Employee Center, select the employee you want to modify and type the full name exactly as you want it to display. The employee record that you edit to match the other record gets deleted and changed to match the correct employee information. Copy the information from the employee you want to merge into the new employee record before changing the name to prevent losing any information.

Report Details

Reports created with any Ship To columns may create several duplicate entries. To correct the error, you can remove the Ship To columns from your report. Another option, if you need to keep the Ship To column, involves creating a custom field for the report. To create the custom field, highlight a customer's name and select the "Edit Customer" option. Choose the "Additional Info" tab and select "Define Fields." Input a single character into the "Label" field and select the "Cust" column. Save the field and add the custom field to your report. Print the report again and the extra pages won't display.

Disclaimer

Information in this article applies to QuickBooks 2013. It may vary slightly or significantly with other versions or products.