Using Custom Filters for Customers and Vendors in QuickBooks

There is a very powerful option within QuickBooks to help you quickly filter and find customers and/or vendors that match certain criteria (i.e. zip code). It's unfortunate that this option isn't as obvious as it could be within the software.

When browsing your customer list in the Customer Center, there is a drop-down menu at the top of the list that provides several choices:

• All customers
• Active customers
• Customers with open balances
• Custom filters

In this post, we will focus on the custom filters option.

 

Once you select the custom filter option, another box appears. This box is where the power and functionality of this feature lies:

As you can see, you have the ability to search and filter by:

• Name fields
• Address fields
• Phone fields
• Customer: Job name
• Company name
• City
• State
• Zip
• E-Mail
• Accounts number
• Custom fields
• Memo

For example, if I wanted to filter my customer list for all (not just active) customers that had a zip code of 94326, I would complete the box as shown below:

and then click the "Go" button.

My customer list is then filtered by zip code!

Clearing this custom filter is easy - just click the red "X" that appears to undo your search and filters or simply remove the filter option you have entered.

ALTERNATE METHOD OF FILTERING - Just type the zip code in the "find" box at the top of the customer list. Keep in mind that this method may find matching results in other areas beside the zip code field - using this option, it will display ALL matches to the criteria you have entered, not just the zip code.

SPECIAL NOTE IF USING JOBS - If you use the custom filter option and you have jobs in your list, QuickBooks changes the view of the list from the standard "hierarchical view" (say that 3 times fast!) to the "flat view". Translated, this alternate view doesn't show the jobs as being "indented" in the customer list as they normally are. Quick fix - just right click on the customer list and click the "hierarchical view" to return it to normal.

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Scott Gregory is a specialist with QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise accounting software. He has been helping businesses "think beyond the ledger" for over 25 years.

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Comments

[Sue DuPlessis]

Is there any way to search the SHIP TO records to retrieve customer records for specific ship to locations using "ship to #'s"?