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Hi team,

Just facing a problem with xero as I'm wasting time inserting clients into the system. The reason is, as we have clinets that are working for the same company, but as we need to bill them separately, each time that I have a new client, even though is working for the same company, we still need to create a new account.

For this reason, I was asking if there would be an option to duplicate the contact and then modify the primary contact and email address. So in this way we would save a lot of time.

Thanks
Bruno

When creating a new invoice and adding a new customer at the same time, It wont let me add a customer if they have the same name as an already existing customer. For example Mr Smith is already a customer on the system, but today a new Mr Smith becomes a customer. They are a different person, different address, When I add an invoice for them and try to create them as a new customer, It always defaults to the first one that was on already on the system, even when you click 'add as new contact' I always end up having to add a full stop after their name or add something to the second contact to make it somehow different to the first one.

This is also very important to our organisation. This issue has been in place for over 10 YEARS NOW! Surely this can be prioritised?

My problem is the similarity of names in Xero if we have bill imports and we have a Mrs Jane Smith and a Jane Smith the upload ends up in the wrong account. If the account code was used (this being a unique reference) then this would work.
All names are fictious and do not refer to a real person

This is the same as MohammedTahir down below and I think other posts. Please fix urgently

Please can this be fixed asap?! I've had to add a unique reference at the end of the name which is affecting invoicing and making the process inefficient

JUst voteD Critic3l fOr tHis!

This is CRITICAL and the current suggestion of changing/bastardising clients names by randomly adding capitals and special characters is incredibly rude don't you think x#r0? Seems to me that some idiot made the client name the unique identifier for a contact instead of using a truly unique identifier such as email and that person should be fired. We have multiple clients with the same common names and also multiple clients/contacts for the same company (where the invoices need to be addressed to the company but sent to different people) and this bug/flaw/oversight is an absolute nightmare!

When adding a new contact, you should be allowed to enter a contact with the same name, if you want to add a contact with the same name then the account number should be different - if the account number is the same then it should not be allowed to be duplicated. I have many clients who have customers with the same name and I cannot add them as a contact!

@Jack Brown in Australia, sole traders can have a business name that's their full legal name - I've attached a screenshot of what comes up if you search the business register for "John Smith". All these sole traders must be referred to on invoices by their business name, which means that the contact name MUST match the name that their ABN is registered to... which is a duplicate, because it's their personal name, and the only differentiator is the ABN.

(Adding the ABN or account number to the contact name is legal and a workaround, but... why should I have to use a workaround?)

In straight database terms the primary key being a concatenated fname & lname is probably unfixable. The problems it creates aren't in public view and who cares what the CFO and sysadmins think?
I guess Xero guarantees some sort of continuity to its add-on development partners and the total of all these people, along with Xero's *********** of the market, lead to them having to redesign their product as will all their service partners using APIs.
It is generally a waste of time complaining in this forum which is probably used by xero to deflect complaints which will continue, in their minds, ad nauseam.
Perhaps it is better to complain to the next level up in the chain/pyramid that has an interest in your issues with xero's product and let them do the same.

I am utterly flabbergasted that a premium AP tool that is marketed for e-commerce and retail businesses uses name as a unique identifier. I am even more shocked that this somehow got passed all sign offs and into production without someone spotting it. It shows there was clearly little to no user testing, feedback gathering, and e-commerce use case testing prior to selling us a product stating it is fit for purpose. If this is not resolve I will be looking at the cost comparison of bringing legal action for misrepresentation of your product, to cover the cost of a transition to a fit for purpose platform.

FYI there are over 30,000 John Smiths in the UK.
500,000 'Smiths' in the UK alone
5.75% of the ENTIRE population have the surname 'Jones' in the UK

Shall I continue to show just how embarrassing this is as a problem for Xero to find its self in...... get it fixed stop dragging your feet. For a bunch of accountants, you clearly struggled with basic math on this one.

When importing customers data from CSV it's giving an error if the customer's name is duplicating. It should not be the case. This is very obvious that there will be a same name for multiple customers. If needed have the customer # field to be unique.

@Adam Bent

Nice workaround!
I expect Xero gives some sort of guarantee to all those involved in the after-market that the database schema won't be changed for x years...
Looking at the downstream implications of changing the primary key [Contact Name] it is hard to see how it could ever be rolled out without ensuing chaos.

@Sarah Coxon

Yes, this is a terrible flaw in the Xero database that they have known about for a significant time, yet have not fixed.

To add to other comments, the unique reference within Xero is the "Contact name". By appending the name with a unique reference you will create a unique record in Xero that is searchable.

Then populate the "Primary Person" fields with the correct name excluding the unique reference.

For formatted documents such as invoices you can remove the tab for "Contact Name" and instead rely on "Primary Person". This will look wrong on the screen, but will print correctly on your documents.

One of my clients creates new users in a third party platform and created their API to populate Xero as above so it is automated.

Maybe I should get them to create a fix and sell it to Xero..........

Sarah Coxon - if you need Xero to have the full name of each contact the best solution we have come up with is to append the account number to the surname eg First Name + Last Name (10901).

Alternatively if you are issuing the invoice from a third party application you can simply create a placeholder organization within Xero using your unique account number as the name. It’s not ideal obviously but allows you to keep your transactions separately and be able to trace them back to the issuing system.

I have just started work on intigrating a clients system with xero when I realised this issue, it's absolutely rediculous, people have the same names!!

At first I didn't believe what I was seeing... using the API to add a contact with just ContactNumber, AccountCode and Name... what I expected was everytime I ran the command it would create a new contact as I hadn't included the xero ContactID. I then thought maybe the system was being clever and recognising the same ContactNumber, this makes sense as that's supposed to be the unique identifier for the contact on our system but I tried just changing the ContactNumber and it still just overwrote the other one.

Finally I figured out that to create a new contact I had to change both the number and the name. Number is fine but now not sure what to do, this is going to be a massive problem for us as the client has many customers with the same names.

Would be really useful to know if there are any other fields that have to be unique to create a new contact instead of overwriting an existing one?

@James DC
From the conversations I have had with Xero, this work is not even on the horizon (I'm not Xero so someone with more knowledge may correct me).

With one of my clients, we did find a work around for bringing in client information from an external source. It isn't ideal or perfect, but it does work.

Our external system creates a unique ID for each contact, regardless of name. We have set the API to:
1 - consolidate the client name and unique ID and use this as the Xero 'Contact Name'. This avoids any duplication and still allows you to search by name or ID.
2 - populate the Xero 'Primary Contact' with the client name. This could be an individual or company.
3 - reformat invoices to remove the 'Contact Name' and use the 'Primary Contact'. This keeps all communication clean and correct.

I'm not the tech, but if you have any questions I am sure I can get an answer for you.

Hope this helps.

Adam

Is there any update to this? I know this said isn't 'coming short term' which as a developer usually means not within the next 6 months, but it would be nice to know if the xero devs are currently discussing it, or creating a POC, or even in testing stage. We're in the process of migrating our invoicing system to xero of which we have hundreds of duplicate organisation names, and fudging them with a zero width space isn't the answer. At the moment its a show stopper on my API work as our internal system doesn't enforce this. Even a combination of account name + account ref if uniqueness must be upheld would be sufficient.

Xero is currently set up to recognise whether a contact is a duplicate based on the "Contact Name" however, it would be very helpful to have the option to set up "by Email". This way, if an email address is entered on a new contact which is already assigned to an existing contact, this would show an error. It could be an "Optional" error, where you are able to click "ignore" and continue to create the contact, as this may not work for all businesses.

Database issues aside, the idea that a business won't ever deal with two different people with the same name is absolutely rediculous. 2 weeks is a quick fix, 9 years is simply ignoring the issue...