Custom Fields in QuickBooks Enterprise 10
I discussed custom fields in QuickBooks in an article last year, and it is one of the most popular articles in my blog. Many users depend on custom fields to add features to invoices, sales orders and estimates (and more). The two most common complaints about custom fields have been there need to be more and I need to define the “type” of the field. If you are a user of QuickBooks Enterprise – good news! Intuit has listened.
The bad news is that these changes are only supported by Enterprise, not Pro or Premier, and that at least in the initial release there are some problems that may affect people who use third party addon programs.
If you aren’t familiar with custom fields or how they can be used in lists and order templates, I recommend that you review my Custom Fields in QuickBooks article before proceeding.
More Custom Fields
Up until now you could have five custom fields in the item list, and seven custom fields in the customer, vendor or employee lists (with a maximum of 15 total for all three lists).
With the release of QuickBooks Enterprise V 10 we now have the ability to add up to 15 custom fields in the item list, and 12 custom fields in the customer, vendor or employee lists (with a maximum of 30 total for all three lists).
This is a significant and welcome increase!
Custom Field Attributes
In prior versions the custom fields were simply a 30 character text field. With this release we have a wonderful range of selections and features that are available. I’ll use the Item List as an example. Here is the Define Fields window (forgive me for the simplistic field names):
Required On
There are two columns that have been added under the heading of required on, Trans and List. if you check these boxes then you must enter a value in the field in the list or transaction, as you specify. If you check this in the item list you are asked what item type this will be applied to.
Note that Part in this list refers to a Non-Inventory Part, while Inventory refers to an Inventory Part, which I found a bit confusing at first.
If I try to save the custom fields for an item and leave the required field empty. I get a warning.
Kind of Data
This is great – you can specify the kind of data this field will accept, from a list of options.
It would have been nice if they provided us with a way to enter our own “mask”, but that would have been complicated. You have options for numbers, dates, phone numbers and a multi-choice list, which I know will excite a number of users.
If you choose multi-choice list you can enter a list of choices that can be used for the field. You have the option of limiting the user to this list or letting them add their own values.
I don’t know at this time if there is any limit to the number of choices for a list.
Problems With The New Custom Fields
Unfortunately, with the first release of Enterprise 10, I’ve been coming across some problems related to custom fields. I’ll try to not get too far into the technical details here, as it can be a bit tricky.
Many people use third party integrated or “QuickBooks Compatible” products that work with QuickBooks using the “SDK”, a programming interface that Intuit has supported for a number of years. Some of these third party products use custom fields (such as my CCRQInvoice invoicing program) for a variety of things. Unfortunately, Intuit has decided to “freeze” development of the “SDK”, so they aren’t going to add new features or fix bugs that they know about, which is really going to limit the usefulness of QuickBooks in many situations).
The problems I’ve found so far:
- Third party programs cannot see the added custom fields. This may severely limit the usefulness of the added fields in many situations.
- Third party programs cannot see the field attributes of any custom field. This is less of a problem, but it is annoying.
- QuickBooks erroneously reports the “Other” fields as being “custom fields” if you use those fields as columns in an order. On the surface this didn’t seem that big of a problem, but I’ve found a number of applications that will show errors when this happens. Note that this occurs in Pro and Premier as well.
For those of you who use the ODBC driver to access data, please note that this driver is built on the SDK and therefore has all of these same problems.
These are not show stoppers in most cases. Most people won’t run into problems with this. However, if you are using a third party product that works with QuickBooks I would recommend that you test that product with Enterprise 10 before you commit yourself to it.
Is This Valuable?
Yes, this is a valuable addition. It is unfortunate that it is limited to Enterprise, but that is consistent with the Intuit marketing approach for the product (and the more robust database manager in Enterprise may be needed to manage this added data).
I know a number of companies that will bite the bullet and move up to Enterprise just to get these features.
Let me know what you think!
Category: Inventory, Invoicing, Program Updates, QB 2010
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He’s been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70′s, focusing on inventory and accounting software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Look for Charlie’s articles in the QuickBooks and Beyond blog, as well as his California Wildflower Hikes blog.
Connect with Charlie at Google
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Kern, that is the way it is intended to work. The custom field information is inserted into the actual transaction. The reports that look at transactions will include only the information from transactions. For some people, this is the way it should work. I may have a “total weight” field. I don’t want the same total weight to show up on all transactions, I want the weight of each individual transaction to show up.
If you want the value of the master record to show in a report then you need to build your report using a reporting tool that lets you see this information, and lets you configure the report to include the value from the master record, not from the transaction itself.
Charly,
Is it possible to add a time to the invoices
regards
Derrick
After customizing my invoice in QuickBooks for Mac 2010, then when entering the information in the invoice, the columns on the screen are distorted in width and I want to adjust them to fit my custom needs as I have on the template…in other words the invoice on the screen does not reflect my customized invoice template. How can I change the widths of the columns?
John Mc: I don’t work with the Mac version at all, you may want to ask this in the Intuit Community Forums in the Mac section…
I use Quickbooks Pro 2010. In my estimates and invoices, I need to create a column with the same function as the quantity column to account for days. I need the caluctaution to be Rate X Quantity X Days = Total. Is this possible?
James, QuickBooks won’t do that kind of calculation for you. It only does quantityXrate=amount, and custom fields cannot be included in the calculations.
My company produces a product, CCRQInvoice, that can do that specific calculation for you, workign with QuickBooks. See it at http://www.ccrsoftware.com/CCRQInvoice/InvoiceQ.htm
Hi-
I am using Quickbooks Enterprise, Version 11. I am to understand that for each item set up, you may only assign one general ledger account #. The Company has a requirement to use a variety of G/L account numbers on both the revenue and expense side relating to each item. Is there a way, through the use of custom fields on an invoice, to capture the specific general ledger account # associated with each individual transaction? Is there a way to capture this info, and have it NOT print on a customer invoice, yet have it available for custom reporting purposes (modified p & l, etc.)?
Thanks for your help!
Mary Ann
As you have seen, QB doesn’t let you do that. I’m not sure what exactly your situation is so I can’t make recommendations on how to work around it.
You could put alternate account information in custom fields, and add them on the invoice screen but not on the printed invoice, and they would be available in reports that are based on the inventory detail. However, that info would have no effect on accounting, and wouldn’t be visible in your financial statements.
I have Enterprise, but when I follow your instructions, i can’t get the options for “kind of data”. I need some custom fields with drop down menus for the invoice. Is it perhaps because i’m in “professional” edition and should be in “general business” or something? when I call Quickbooks they insist they don’t have the option to customize fields! Thanks for any help.
Lisa, I believe that you are a Canadian firm? If so, all of this info applies to the US versions. I don’t believe that the Canadian version has this feature. The Canadian versions are always a year or two behind the US versions. Forgive me if I made an incorrect assumption.
Ah, that would explain it. I wish they had clarified that on purchase! Thanks very much.
I am using “Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions: Manufacturing and Wholesale 11.0″
I am trying to search for a Work order number using the search feature but it will allow me to search for it because it is a Custom Field (under “other”) and in the advanced filter in search (F3) there is no check box for “Other”…I tried google desktop and that does not work either.
How can I search this custom field? I have no 0 luck finding an answer to this.
Thanks.
Phil, first of all, a correction. The “Other” fields are not “Custom” fields. Those are two different things. The “Other” fields are an older type of field in a few transactions, I generally recommend that people avoid using them. They can’t be added to reports, they are not always available in third party addons, they have very limited use. “Custom” fields are a different thing – handled entirely differently in the database. They are more likely to be available in addon programs, they are more likely to be available in reports. You set them up in a different way.
Having said that, in Enterprise 11, the new search feature doesn’t work with custom fields. You can still do some searches using the older search feature – instead of using F3, use Ctrl-F. That gets you the older “find” dialog. It still won’t work with the “other” fields, but it will work with “custom” fields.
The “Other” fields should have gone away when custom fields were added, but Intuit left them there for compatibility reasons.
Charlie, thanks very much for taking the time to blog about this feature. We’ll need to spend a little bit of time figuring out if this will help us with our goals but I’m intrigued by the possibilities. If this could help us with QB’s lack of color/size/attribute functionality, that would be huge. I’d really be interested in knowing if any other clothing companies are using this.
Thanks again!
I currently don’t have QB but Quicken Home and Business. I’m thinking of buying QB Enterprise 10 after reading through this blog about Custom Fields. What I am in need of is a Date Column, as I’m a service provider and my customers want to know what date I conducted a visit or activity. Quicken doesn’t allow for customizing columns with a Date field. With QB Enterprise 10, it appears I can create a Date field by review of the “Labels” feature above, under “Fifteenth”, am I correct in assuming this? It appears I could add a date to each of my activities which I bill for. Do I need to have QB Pro before I can have Enterprise? I have Windows Vista Business OS. Thank you for this informative blog.
Debbie, you would be buying Enterprise 12 at this time, but it has all those same features.
Pro, Premier and Enterprise are three levels of the QuickBooks product, each is separate. You don’t need Pro or Premier if you get Enterprise.
However, I don’t know if you need Enterprise based on your brief description of your needs. Even with Pro you can add custom fields and add data to transactions. Pro and Premier and lower cost than Enterprise – and the custom fields allow you to enter any data. You can enter a date there, too. It just doesn’t FORCE the field to be a date.
HOWEVER, note that in Premier (possibly Pro also, I would have to check) there is an optional “service date” column that you can add to your invoice for just the purpose you state. You don’t need to use a custom field for that.
Thank you, that was very helpful. I might check out Premier then, sounds like it may be enough. Each service/activity entry I bill for must have a date column next to it on my invoice form. Thanks again for your help!
I work for non profit organisation. Currently we manage 4 projects from different funding that requires different type of reporting structure.
I can utilize classes feature to separate the uses of money/the spending, but I have no idea how to code each transaction so I can generate every donor report according each reporting structure.
Your help would be much appreciated
Thanks and regards