Your Run a Call customers become customers in QuickBooks Online — carefully. Before creating anyone, Run a Call looks hard for a match in your books, and when it isn't sure it asks you instead of guessing. The goal: no duplicate customers in QuickBooks, ever.
When a customer goes to QuickBooks
- When you add or edit a customer in Run a Call.
- When you send them an invoice (or record a payment), if they aren't in QuickBooks yet.
- The hourly sync, for anything that didn't go through.
The Customers switch under Sync settings & account mapping → Sync Settings must be on.
Leads stay out of QuickBooks. A contact only syncs once they're a customer (or you invoice them), so your books don't fill up with people who never bought anything.
Matching before creating
Run a Call checks your QuickBooks customers in this order and links to a match instead of creating a copy:
- The same display name (the company name, or first and last name).
- The same name followed by an account number (for example Robert Anderson 1042).
- The name written "Last, First" (Anderson, Robert).
- The same email address.
- The same phone number (last 10 digits).
A rule only links when it finds exactly one QuickBooks customer. If two or more could be the right one, the customer is held back so you can decide — it never guesses.
If there's no match at all, a new QuickBooks customer is created with the name (company name if there is one), email, phone, billing address, the first service address as the shipping address, and the customer's tax exempt setting.
Safety rules
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| The customer came over from your previous software | Never created in bulk — only matched. If there's no match, the customer waits with "came from your old system with no QuickBooks match". Create or rename them in QuickBooks, then open and save the customer in Run a Call to re-match. Exception: if you send that customer a new invoice, they're created so the invoice can post. |
| The QuickBooks customer is already linked to another Run a Call customer | Held back with "two records point at the same QuickBooks entry". Merge or rename the duplicate, then save the customer to retry. |
| More than one possible match | Held back so you can clean up the duplicates in QuickBooks, then retry. |
| A very large batch of brand-new customers | Paused by a safety limit in an established QuickBooks company. Confirm they're really new, then retry. |
Held-back customers appear on the QuickBooks page under records that need attention, and the customer's profile shows a QuickBooks sync issue badge. See Resolving common QuickBooks errors.
Edits and deletes
- Name, contact and address edits update the linked QuickBooks customer.
- Deleting a customer in Run a Call marks the QuickBooks customer inactive. Their history in QuickBooks stays.
Bringing QuickBooks customers into Run a Call
Customers only flow from QuickBooks during the optional history import (see Connecting your QuickBooks Online account). It brings in your QuickBooks customers (inactive ones too, so older invoices have a customer to land on), and QuickBooks sub-customers become extra properties (service addresses) under their parent customer. Imported customers stay linked, so they're never pushed back as duplicates. After that, customers you add in QuickBooks don't appear in Run a Call.