QuickBooks 2021 Desktop - Create Customer Groups

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Intuit recently released QuickBooks 2021 Desktop. Insightful Accountant has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for months and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of individual product features intended to provide additional content to that within our QuickBooks Desktop 2021 product synopsis.

About Customer Groups

Create customer groups allows you to create rule-based customer groups (and Emailing lists) based on fields like customer type, status, location, and even balance. You can then use those groups across multiple QuickBooks features.

It is designed to reduce the time users spend in manually sending communications to their customers using systems outside QuickBooks by allowing them to create multiple customer lists in the form of groups that can be reused for differing purposes. Ease of management of these lists comes from the fact that it is also designed to eliminate the need to manually update customer lists each time a new customer is added to QuickBooks and needs to be included in a previously established list or group.

QuickBooks Desktop 2021 allows you to use Customer Groups to send promotional emails to your customers meeting certain criteria from a single place. And because you can use these Customer Groups for multiple purposes within QuickBooks, the list you make for one feature can be used for another feature when needed, including future features still under development.

Since you create and use Customer Groups based on predefined criteria which you set, you have the option of letting QuickBooks automatically add or remove members to the group based on those criteria rather than you needing to manually update lists every time.

Creating Customer Groups

To create Customer Groups, select Lists from the QuickBooks menu, then choose Manage groups - you will land on the customer groups dashboard. Begin the customer group creation process by clicking on the "Create customer group" button.

Now create the Customer group (as shown below) by entering the Name and Description, then click Next.

The next step is to select fields and values used to create rules that will define your Customer Group (as shown below).  Click on the Fields dropdown, and select one field (Customer type, Rep, Customer status, sales tax, etc.). Set the Operator dropdown value to "equals", and then select one or more values for the selected Customer field from the "Values" dropdown. Now click the "ADD" button.

Note: In our example (above) we have selected the status to be equal to Active, this means that we are only choosing Active Customers. Once you have clicked on the ADD button, notice the summary of selected values in the "Selected fields" box.

You may select additional criteria as needed, to do so simply select any other Customer field from the remaining fields. Then choose the Operator and select the appropriate Value(s). Click the "ADD" button for each additional criterion you wish to include in the Selected fields.

Once you have finalized all your choices, click NEXT to proceed. QuickBooks displays the ‘view/select customers’ window (as shown below).

Note: You can click on the Selected fields accordion to see the summary of fields you have selected for this list.

The Customer list displayed is a subset of the customer list in the Customer Center and is a function of the fields and values you selected.  Notice the checkbox option “Automatically add or remove customers based on the fields selected in the group”, selecting this option enables QuickBooks to automatically add or remove members to your group based on the criteria you set rather than you having to manually update the list every time you add a new Customer or alter their status in a way that should remove them from the group.

Once you are satisfied with your Customer Group, click Finish to complete the customer group creation (as shown above). QuickBooks returns you to the Customer Group Dashboard (AKA: the Customer group tab of Manage Groups, as seen below).

Sending Emails from Customer Groups

As we told you, Customer Groups were designed to reduce the time users spend in manually sending communications to their customers using systems outside QuickBooks. One of those ‘outside systems’ is Email and QuickBooks Desktop 2021 allows you to use Customer Groups to send promotional emails. So, let’s look at using Customer Groups to send Emails.

To use Customer Groups, select Lists from the QuickBooks menu, then choose Manage groups - you will land on the Groups Dashboard. Depending on your version of QuickBooks you will either see Customer groups (if you have created them), or both Customer groups and Vendor groups (if you have created them). Each type of group will appear on their own left-hand tab within the Manage groups window.

Select the Customer groups tab if QuickBooks did not default to that display. The various Customer groups you have created will be displayed (as shown below). 

Click on the drop-down Select arrow under the Actions column of any one of the Customer groups and QuickBooks will display an action menu.

Select the Email option from the action menu, QuickBooks will launch the ‘Send Forms’ dialog box giving you the ability to customize the email you wish to send, and to also make individualized adjustments to the Group members prior to transmitting the email. When you are finally ready just click 'Send Now'.

Personally I love where this feature is headed, I think the future is vast for QuickBooks 'group' technology. As you can see in the above depiction both Customer and Vendor groups can be set up, and while this article focused solely on customers, we can assume that Intuit's Development Teams will be working on 'other' similar list arrangements. I can see a reason to have 'Employee groups' when it comes to defining additional layers of security as with QuickBooks Enterprise. One Intuit Development Team already made use of both Customer and Vendor groups in defining 'Data Level Permissions', another new feature for Enterprise Platinum and Diamond this year. You can learn more about 'Data Level Permissions' in our Summary of QuickBooks Enterprise v21 (2021) here.

Feature Availability: At the time of the initial release of QuickBooks 2021, Customer Groups will be available in QuickBooks Pro and Premier, QuickBooks Accountant, QuickBooks ProPlus, QuickBooks PremierPlus, and QuickBooks Enterprise (all subscription levels).  This feature enhancement is scheduled for release within the United States, Canadian, and United Kingdom country versions of QuickBooks Desktop.

You will find our summary of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise for 2021 along with other related features in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of this feature.

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to my good friend Laura Madeira who allowed me to cross-check my articles with advance copies of her features to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the 2021 release. Laura, and her co-author Karen Siewert, have written three separate articles this year covering different aspects of the QuickBooks 2021 release, please be certain to check them out at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog:

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication in providing information, numerous briefings, and responding to my questions, as well as in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Sowmya Murthy, Madhumita Tayade, Muthuraj Thangavel, Tulasi Vijay Kumar Thulluru, and Raman Verma. I also want to say thanks to Michelle Berg, Mindy King, and Shawn Sturgeon from Intuit for additional product briefings and information along with the various members of Intuit's Alpha & Beta Product Testing Teams for QuickBooks 2021.

Of course, there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel behind all of these people that make the magic happen and we so often forget to say, thank you, to them, so to all involved, “Thank You for Another Great Product"!

Note: Some images used in this feature are displayed directly as provided by Intuit, others may have been modified from the source material Intuit provided.