How to Export a Customer List from QuickBooks
QuickBooks business accounting software stores a list of your customers and their contact details so you can invoice them, record transactions in the program, or follow up on past-due receivables.
This article will tell you how to effortlessly export customers from QuickBooks and use this data for various purposes, such as building a dedicated email list or importing the data to another program.
Why export a customer list from QuickBooks
Whether your business sells products or services, the first sale to a new customer triggers a set of actions in QuickBooks. It could be creating a new customer, filling in their information, attaching files, and the pinnacle of all this effort – sending an invoice.
Lists are a practical way of grouping your contacts together. By clicking on a selected number of customers, you can perform batch actions such as creating statements, sending emails, or inactivating customers.
Notably, there might be a wealth of reasons that you want to export a customer list from QuickBooks. Below is a list of the most common scenarios:
- Backing up data in another program or database for preservation owing to unexpected QuickBooks issues, troubles in the cloud infrastructure, and good old human error.
- Moving data to another program for visualization analysis. Compelling charts, graphs, or dashboards can help you take better data-driven decisions and boost the growth of your business.
- Moving data to another program when upgrading QuickBooks to the latest release manually (this applies to the QuickBooks Desktop).
- Sharing customer data with a subsidiary or another business of your own.
- Integrating QuickBooks with other software such as ticketing systems (e.g., JIRA) and CRM (e.g., Salesforce).
Independently of the case, you can manually export your customer list using QuickBooks built-in export features or third-party tools that automate the process and allow for more flexibility. It all depends on the bookkeeping needs of your business. Furthermore, export options differ depending on whether you use the online or desktop version of QuickBooks.
How to export a customer list from QuickBooks Online
There are two ways to export a customer list from QuickBooks Online. The first is from the Customers page, and the other is from the Reports page. Both options enable you to export data from QuickBooks to Excel, while from the Reports page you can also export data to PDF.
Each option yields a different result. For example, the exported Excel file from the Customers page contains a larger number of column categories, meaning that data is listed in a more organized way. While from the Reports page you can export a smaller number of columns, it offers customization options – you can group customer data by any category you wish.
If Excel or PDF formats are not good enough for you, you may want to look into exporting a customer list from QuickBooks automatically. Read more about this in the later section.
Export a customer list from Customers page in QuickBooks Online
If you export from the Customer page, you’ll be able to export information like Name, Company, Address, Phone number, Email address, Attachment, Open Balance, and Notes.
- Once you log in to your QuickBooks Online, go to either:
- Get paid & pay or Customers & leads in the Business view.
- Or Sales, then Customers in the Accountant view.
- Then select the Customers tab.
- Select the Export icon next to the Print icon.
- Choose Export to Excel.
Export a customer list from the Reports page in QuickBooks Online
Exporting your customer list from the Reports page enables you to customize the information you want to export to Excel or PDF.
- Go to Business overview and then select Reports.
- Then search for the Customer Contact List Report as depicted below.
- Click the Customize button on the right-hand side, and then on the next page, select which information you wish to export. Then hit Run Report.
- Select the Export icon next to the Print icon, then choose Export to Excel or Export to PDF.
Why use third-party tools to export a customer list from QuickBooks
QuickBooks supports bulk data export for multiple records simultaneously, giving you an edge if you export a large amount of customer data.
But let’s face it: what happens if you wish to fetch not the entire customer list but only a part of it? Let’s assume you want to share customer data with an external team that needs specific customer records to deliver their service. Could you grant blanket access to everyone in your business without worrying about accessing, altering, deleting, or exporting records that they shouldn’t?
And what happens when you have to export customer lists regularly, even daily? Just like any tedious tasks and mundane, recurring processes, regular data exports are exhausting, time-consuming, and inevitably affect the productivity of your work.
Third-party solutions could significantly contribute to solving all your woes related to regular and safe customer data export and help you improve the quality of your exported data. As a result, you can run and manage your business more effectively and derive greater benefits from your analytics.
Examples of third-party tools to export a customer list from QuickBooks
There are many handy tools available online to automate QuickBooks data exports. Examples include Coupler.io, Data Flow Manager by Atandra Systems LLC, and Transaction Pro.
Here, we will show how Coupler.io can greatly make your life easier and render customer data transfer hassle-free. This tool allows you to export the customer list to Excel, Google Sheets, and BigQuery on a set schedule. This eases the process of selecting a specific segment of your customer list for further analysis or use. You can customize the frequency for your data exports from every month to even every 15 minutes! High refresh rates are very useful for on-demand reporting, nearly real-time dashboards, or feeding the latest data into other software.
How to export a customer list from QuickBooks Online to Excel automatically
In this section, we’ll demonstrate how you could utilize Coupler.io to run a QuickBooks export to Excel. This way, you can fetch customer data from Quickbooks Online automatically, on a custom schedule (for example, daily).
If you prefer, you can also connect QuickBooks to Google Sheets or, alternatively, automate data import from QuickBooks to BigQuery.
Once you’ve signed up for Coupler.io, you’ll need to complete the following steps to export your customer data:
- Choose Source and Destination apps
You’ll need to choose QuickBooks as a source app. You’ll also find QuickBooks Reports on the list, which feature reports such as Balance Flow, Cash Flow, Vendor Balance, or Transaction List. However, they won’t be helpful for exporting contacts.
Then, select the destination app. Coupler.io allows you to export your QuickBooks data to Google Sheets, Excel, and BigQuery. We’ll opt to proceed with Microsoft Excel.
- Connect to your QuickBooks account
Log in to your QuickBooks Online account and then click on the Connect button.
- Select a data category to export
To export the customer list, pick Customer from the Data entity list.
- Connect to your destination account
Configure your destination account. Then, you will be asked to select an existing workbook and an existing sheet. If you don’t have a sheet, you can create one by typing in a new name.
The importer also provides an optional feature that lets you specify the column where the imported data will be added to the destination sheet. This facilitates the operation of any formulas you might have created on a selected range of cells.
- Set up a custom schedule
Coupler.io’s key feature is Automatic data refresh. Here are the scheduling settings available:
- Interval (Every Hour, Every Day, Every Week)
- Day of week
- Time
- Time zone
Once you complete this step, you then click Save and Run. Then, the importer will populate the Excel sheet you specified to your Destination account with customer list data. The result will look like this:
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Export customer list from QuickBooks Desktop
To export a customer list from QuickBooks Desktop, click on Excel and select Export Customer List.
Then, select Create new worksheet and click in new workbook. Ultimately, click Export.
Export a customer list from QuickBooks – Recap
Independently of the products or services you sell, customers are the lifeblood of any business. Therefore, customer records are among the most essential entities in QuickBooks and probably account for most of the time you spend on the platform.
Ensuring a consistent and secure transfer of customer data will help ensure accurate bookkeeping. Whether you wish to export a customer list from QuickBooks Online or export a customer list from QuickBooks Desktop, Coupler.io saves the day: automated data exports have never been easier for a business!
