QuickBooks advisor tips&tricks - how to avoid having Duplicate Names?

While working with a client who is switching to a computerized system, we came across an issue related to duplicate customers’ name in the database. These duplicates happened primarily from a lack understanding of best practices when entering such data. After reviewing and assisting with the clean up, the QuickBooks advisor who was in charge of this particular customer, came up with some tips that makes the data entry process more uniformed which should lessen the amount of duplication in the database and make it easier to find customers in the future. Use 'and' instead of '&' – This happens quite a lot, trust me I know. For example, in one case a customer by the name of “A & A Contracting” was listed in 4 different variations: - A & A Contracting - A&A Contracting - A& A Contracting - A &A Contractingr All these different variations make it complicated to locate the customer promptly when doing a search, forcing users to scroll through the name list to find the name they are looking for. By following this simple rule, every user would have entered “A and A Contracting”. While possible, we doubt that many users would ever enter “AandA Contracting” as this variation of the name doesn’t look readable. No abbreviations with periods – we highly recommend that when a firm has abbreviations or initials in their name to exclude the use of periods and spaces. Some people use it, others don’t when entering it in the database, which can cause people not to be able to find the customer they are looking for. A regular example is “W.B. Mason”. In this case, we would recommend that the name entered would be “WB Mason”. This would simplify the data entry. Additionally, for people that are new to computers, the less typing the easier it is for them. This would also eliminate issues where someone might enter “W. B. Mason” by putting spaces before periods, and another user not entering spaces. The more room that users have to change things within customers’ names, the more likely you will get duplicate names. Don't use shorthand – (unless it’s VERY common). A lot of the customers that my client deals with are contractors and construction companies. This leads to some people using shorthand for words, like “const.” or “cont.”, and sometimes as “con”. Apart from being confusing (is ‘con.’ short for construction, contractor, continental?), it also makes it more difficult for users to search. Enter as much information as you can get – This one started popping up when the owner wanted to make the employees enter client information in the database, instead of just using a generic customer names. In this case, we ended up with multiple customers with just the name of “Mike” and a phone number. With 8 “Mike”s on the list, it was almost impossible to tell which was which. Adding even a last name would have helped out a lot, but adding the address would have made it even easier (in case there are multiple people with the same first and last name). Of course, this is one of the hardest to overcome, because employees get lazy over time when it comes to entering information into a database. By following these few guidelines, your client list should become less cluttered with duplicates, thus it will be faster and easier to locate existing customers, and make the information you collect much more valuable.