Can a customer be a vendor as well? How do you differentiate?

Hello there, wirenutskh. Let me share some information about the customer and a vendor in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

In QBO, a customer can also be a vendor. To differentiate between vendors and customers, vendors sell goods or provide services, while customers buy products or services from a company.

QuickBooks treats vendors, customers, and employees separately. However, it's possible to have customers who are also vendors by adding a special character or any distinction to their profiles. Also, you can mark a particular customer as inactive and consider them as a vendor in the future. To proceed, you can follow the steps below:

Create a new Vendor name (Make sure that this name doesn't have a duplicate)

1. Go to the Expenses tab and select Vendors.
2. Click the New Vendor option.
3. In the Full Name field, enter a name with one keystroke different from the Customer name ( for example, if the Customer name is Cust Mer, make it as Cus T. Mer as Vendor name).
4. Enter the additional contact information.
5. Click Save.

After that, let's Run a Transaction List by Customer report:

1. Go to the Reports tab on the Menu page.
2. From the search dropdown, choose Transaction List by Customer report.
3. Click on Switch to classic view.
4. Edit the Report Period to All Dates and Run Report.
5. Locate each transaction linked to the customer and save them to the new Vendor name.
6. After you've finished editing or adding all the transactions, you can now delete the Customer name.

Please refer to this article for more guidance: Moving names from one list to another in QuickBooks Online.

Furthermore, you can check out this article to learn how to transfer your customer or vendor lists from Outlook, Excel, Gmail, or Google Sheets: Import customers or vendors from email contacts to QuickBooks Online.

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions about customers, vendors, or other QuickBooks-related queries. We're more than happy to assist. Take care.