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.
Hi everyone, we want to thank you all for your meaningful feedback and detail of the uses you each have for enabling duplicate names for contacts.
Right now, the contact name field is the key identifier that interacts with many other Xero features, and as such, changing how this field functions is not a small feat.
As noted by others in the comments, some users have found adding unique characters or using the account number in the contact name useful.
At this time we don’t have plans for developing the ability to have duplicate names of a contact in Xero. However, the work happening around core features might open the door for improvements like this down the line.
For now, we'll keep a close watch on the support this idea continues to build, and we’ll make sure to share updates if anything changes.
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Sushil Bansal
commented
xero database schema was created by someone with no brain at all. It is a common sense to use fields like email id or account id to be unique and not the name. Worst thing is Xero does not allow to search contacts by name or by email; xero allows contacts to be searched by contact number. Absolutely ridiculous; never seen such a piece of ****.
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Sushil Bansal
commented
xero database schema was created by someone with no brain at all. It is a common sense to use fields like email id or account id to be unique and not the name. Worst thing is Xero does not allow to search contacts by name or by email but only by contact number. Absolutely ridiculous; never seen such a piece of ****.
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Joy Foot
commented
there must be a limit on number of votes needed to be considered. 84 votes need to go up up up up up. so everyone you know at work who has access, get them to please place a vote. you meet a friend who uses Xero, get them to see this post and vote
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Joy Foot
commented
This is frustrating indeed and so unprofessional. when you print invoice to send it will have Joy Foot 4 .... wow. and then i have to keep looking up to see which one i am invoicing to make sure I sent to right Joy!
A account no. will be precise as the field to record people in contacts with. e.g. if i had a field acnt no. and i input 350458 - it would pick up the right Joy Foot and address etc... without the client needing to see Joy Foot 3 or 4.why is this so difficult? i come from a basic programming background and this is the easiest field to add?
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Chris Vine
commented
Unfortunately, I just raised the same issue with Xero Support and got this response "If you would like to add 2 x customers with the same name, we would recommend naming them differently to one another for example 'John Doe 1 and John Doe 2' or whatever you have in mind."
Why not simply make the Account Number mandatory (unique) as well, and then it's solved??
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Tom Osmaston
commented
Makes life so much easier. It would help to have duplicates of most things.
Products, Invoices, Contacts -
Jacqui Duffy
commented
Hi. It is very important for us to be able to create duplicate client names in Xero. Any other accounting package I have used has allowed this feature. It would be greatly appreciated if this could be resolved without adding additional characters to names etc.
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Joy Foot
commented
we can keep chipping away at it another 100 eh :)
all they have to do is add a reference ID field which becomes the main identifier rather than the name - that way no matter how you spell the clients name or make error in typing etc., through the main ID field can show all entries under it.
we need more votes. get everyone in your companies to put in a vote that have a log on!!! and friends and family who use it!!!
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Stephen Robinson
commented
Don't hold your breath,this issue was first raised maybe 12 years ago and Xero has done nothing to address it.
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Woon Lee
commented
Hi. Our customers are mostly universities. Some of the faculties in the same university are viewed as different customer even though they are from the same university. The purchase order will require us to use the same university name but the contact person will be different. Our challenge:
1. When we update the contact to the latest contact and the latest contact will receive the receipt rather than the previous contact.
2. We are constantly updating the contact person for the same university.
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Anne Wilkinson
commented
Agree that the ability to have multiple contacts with same name should be allowed and that the account number should be the unique identifier as long as it allows alpha &/or numerical. We have at times 10-15 contacts for one company and if we could have this functionality in Xero it would save quite a lot of time and avoid any errors. Currently every time we do an invoice, purchase order or a quote we have to go into contacts change the contact name and when emailing the client we have to manually enter in the email address (due to only 5 contacts being allowed).
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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!!