To complete this exercise, you must be in the Sample company. From your QBOA account, click on the Gear icon on the top right corner of the screen, then select Sample company.
Note that you will be logged out of your current account. If you are sure, click "Continue" to confirm.
Now let's get started with the exercise.
First, let's create a duplicate customer account.
2
From the left navigation bar, hover over Sales, then select "Customers".
3
Click "New customer".
The new customer will be named Jon Melton (no "h" in the first name). We will use the same phone number and address as the existing customer, John Melton:
85 Pine Street, Menlo Park, CA 94304 \
(650) 555-5879
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In Customer display name field, type "Jon Melton".
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In the Phone number field, type "(650) 555-5879".
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Complete the address fields: 85 Pine Street, Menlo Park, CA 94304.
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Click "Save".
Let's see how you would run a report to find any duplicates.
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From the left navigation bar, click "Reports".
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Click "Customer Contact List".
If any pop-ups appear, just click out of them.
As we look at the report, we can see there are two similarly named customers with the same address and contact phone number.
But what if it wasn't so obivous when looking for duplicates? Perhaps we can look at this another way. Let's sort it by ZIP code.
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Click "Group".
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In the Group field, select "Billing ZIP code".
The report on the left side will automatically update and group by Zip Code.
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Click the "X" to exit.
When you scroll down to 94304, you can see the two accounts, one for John Melton and the other for Jon Melton.
Again, when looking at the report, it's obvious to see this is the same customer as they have the same address and contact phone number.