QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Customer & Vendor Profile Lists

Filling in fields goes much faster when you can choose information from drop-down lists instead of typing. The lists that appear on the Customer & Vendor Profile menu pop up regularly, whether you're creating an invoice, paying a bill, or generating reports. For example, when you create an invoice, QuickBooks fills in the Payment Terms field with the payment terms that you assigned to the customer's record (page 52)—but you can also choose different payment terms from the drop-down list if you urge your customer to pay more quickly.

To create an entry on a list choose Lists→Customer & Vendor Profile, and then when the submenu appears, choose the list you want to tend. For many of these lists, creating entries is no more than typing an entry name and specifying whether the entry is a subentry to another. Here's a breakdown of the information you add to entries in each list and how to put these lists to work for your business:

Sales Rep List

If you pay sales reps on commission or want to assign employees as points of contact for your customers, you can assign people as sales reps to customers and generate reports by sales rep (page 463). But first you have to add the names of your sales reps and contacts to the Sales Rep List.

To add a name to the Sales Rep list, make sure that name appears on the Employee List (page 309), the Vendor List (page 104), or the Other Names List (page 106). Then, in the New Sales Rep List dialog box, in the Sales Rep Name drop-down ...