Contacts - Allow duplicate contact names
Ability to have duplicate contact names in Xero.
Purpose: It’ll make an easier workflow for users. Because often, they have the same contact name and trading name but different addresses.
Hey community, thank you for your continued interest in this idea.
Wanted to provide an update here as it's been a while since we last spoke to duplicate contacts.
I do understand that, at face value, this seems like a quick fix. However, as the contacts screen interacts with many other parts of Xero, this work can not commence until the modernisation of other, related systems is complete.
Due to this, we do not expect support for duplicate contacts to be delivered in the coming short-term.
In the meantime however, we're keen to continue collecting feedback and votes on this idea, and I will update you here as soon as there's more work to share.
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Hla Win commented
We are from Asia, so we have more difficult than Western and Europe because most personal name are exactly same.
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Peter Riddell commented
We have a number of customers with same billing address but multiple delivery addresses. I've voted / commented on this in the past but can't see my comments in the list below
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Sharon Redshaw commented
Yes, I agree, the combination of full stops looks extremely unprofessional
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Emma Rosenblatt (Accounts) commented
I agree with a lot of the comments on this post. The 'Account #’ should be the unique identifier.
And the account number needs to be alpha &/or numerical.We have many contacts for the same organisation each for different aspects of the business. Not having this feature is creating a lot of headache.
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Sarah Bustamante commented
Along with duplicate contact names, it would be helpful to be able to add additional contact to a company. For example, if I'm working with, and billing two different departments, I need to utilize the same address with a different attention to name.
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Esther Knight commented
Critical in order to integrate with other software.
Causes a major problem for Clients and ends in an unprofessional looking name being used in order to ensure it's unique.
There are lots of John Smith's in the world!! -
Angela Crosbie commented
I would like to know the progression for this as it is causing a problem for me. we have online orders, each customer has their own record, so as far as Xero is concerned we can only have one customer with a name and no-one else can have that name!
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Melinda Valis commented
We use Xero to track our Child Care families and entering the same contact information except for child name is so time consuming. It would be great to duplicate address/phone etc and just change the Account Name!
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Terry Bluck commented
Xero, why can’t we use the ‘Account #’ as the unique identifier? The field already exists and it already has to be unique, just make it mandatory and use this!!
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Kerry Brammer commented
Its not just about contacts having the same contact and trading name but with different addresses (like headoffice/branch situation), the main problem here is that Xero is an international accounting software and there are many many thousand John Smith's in this world, and Xero users should be able to create multiple John Smith clients or suppliers which ever is the case. Xero's CRM system needs to properly reflect the needs of current everyday businesses. Simply putting another full-stop in the contact name field - which then so unprofessionally appears on any invoice/statement etc that you generate is just totally wrong.
Surely contact name could be the same but the system require a unique account number be allocated to those contacts.
Or have the contact name used like an internal-use name/client nickname but that all documents generate contact information from new fields set up especially for the Company Name, a tick box to show the contact is an individual and therefore addressee appears as Mr/Mrs Smith etc.
This problem has been an issue since Xero was developed XX years ago. Should have been a much higher priority than given to date. -
Joy Foot commented
since the invoice is printed to ship out with, having dots or numbers etc looks a bit ridiculous or even unprofessional as customer sees this as mistypes etc. :)
since address field is different in its content it should allow same names. in cases where entry is being made with no address details i can understand the relevance of the confusion with same names in the backend program and mixup of records. however, perhaps assigning a ID to each customer might help? ID can be entered by end user e.g. we have debtor nos. that can be entered on top and if this is diff for each it is irrelevant what the client name is...?
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Hazel McNamara commented
We have the same contacts but with different matters. It would be easier to copy a contact than filling in the same information each time.
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Ellen Pickering commented
We started putting in clients middle initial to alleviate the 'same name' problem. We now have had some clients with the same middle name so we are having to put a symbol in their name. It is getting very messy with regards to alphabetical order. Would love to have same name problem sorted soon please Xero?
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Terry Bluck commented
Theres is a field called ACCOUNT NUMBER in Zero. It has to be unique, why not make it a mandatory field and use that? Then we can have as many John Smiths as we need.
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Trent Firmin commented
I have customers in Australia with identical names...yet Zero still think names are unique...come on it 2022!
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Roger Watts commented
Concatenated primary key of fname, lname, email perhaps?
I'll bet the John Smiths of the world feel picked on by Xero -
Jeanine Nienaber commented
We have many customers with the same name and our system is automated so we have to manually intervene to ensure that the correct customer is invoiced.
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Ai Hwei Poh commented
Any updates so far? We need it urgently so solve our invoicing issue or else Xero will lose many customers from this issue
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Kevin Downs commented
Our business deals with a lot of individual customers
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Ann Jones commented
We have many customers with the same name and have to invent different ways to create contacts, e.g. John Smith, Mr John Smith, Mr. John Smith, Mr John Smith.. etc. etc.
It would be more useful for each contact to have a unique id number and the name field unrestricted.