Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be looking into the Custom Client ID feature in QuickBooks Online Accountant.
Hey, ProAdvisors, it's Jaclyn, and you're watching In the Know, where you get exclusive access to demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them.
Let's jump right in with Kaitlyn, who's covering the updates to Custom Client ID. Kaitlyn, welcome!
Kaitlyn Wilchynski, product manager: Hi Jaclyn, thanks for having me. I'm excited to demo this new feature. I'll dive right in.
In February 2025, we launched the Custom Client Number feature— and that was in response to us learning and from firms that they needed this to track their clients through all their products, including QuickBooks Online Accountant.
After we released that, we heard it was too much work to add clients individually, so they needed a way to bulk upload them. And we also heard that it was important that they show up on billing documents such as the CSV. So what did we do? We introduced the ability to bulk upload custom client numbers to QuickBooks Online Accountant, and we also added them to the billing CSV, which helps optimize billing.
Fast Facts:
- Who is this for? Accounting firms who use QuickBooks Online Accountant.
- How to do this: If you're on your client list, you will see a new feature that says, “add/update client numbers in bulk.” You can do it there and follow the instructions. I'll be demoing that shortly. You can also, by navigating to your Billing and Subscriptions, if you download the CSV, you will now see those custom client numbers if they've been uploaded.
- This launched a couple months ago. We're excited to see it already being used.
- It is in all QuickBooks Online Accountant SKUs.
Let's jump into the demo.
Now, what you should be seeing and what you'll see is a client list in QuickBooks Online Accountant, and we are going to be looking at this new “add/update client numbers.” So client number was a feature we added a few months ago where you could manually add them one by one. A lot of firms, we learned, track clients using these unique client numbers, not necessarily by name or email. So we wanted a way for firms to input this into QuickBooks Online Accountant, so this is a way to do it in bulk.
The great thing about this feature is it actually walks through the steps for you, if you click on this “read important guide.” So here you can go through the steps, but it's pretty simple. You download the client list CSV. To that CSV, you add these internal client numbers or unique client IDs, which is what firms sometimes call them. You upload the CSV. Ideally, it all works perfectly. If it doesn't, you will get a detailed error report, and we've given you key troubleshooting information here.
So I have one ready. So I'm going to simply choose the file. I'm going to upload it. While I'm uploading it, you can see all the Client IDs are being uploaded, I have that, and success, all done.
Now when I go back to the client list, you'll see an optional column that is the Client Number. If you select it, there, all the client numbers that I've uploaded now appear. Now if I want to search for our client, I can search by name, like I always have, or I can search using the client number and they'll show up.
The other great thing about this is that if you're to help automate billing for firms that use these unique client IDs, they will also show up when you download the CSV. So if you're automating billing and you don't export this CSV with all the billing details for each line item with a client name, we will also have that unique client identifier.
All of this is to help firms that track their clients across products using an ID to be able to do that in QuickBooks Online Accountant, which you know, makes firms a lot more efficient.
All right. Back to you, Jaclyn!
Jaclyn Anku: Kaitlyn, thank you. If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe. That's all we have for now.
For more product updates and demos, check out our In the Know Hub. We'll catch you next time.
