Combining clients

Cleaning up a duplicate client: the two places you can start a combine, what moves over, which client to keep, and the QuickBooks-first step when both are already linked.

Sometimes the same company ends up in Operant twice, usually because it was typed in slightly differently on two separate jobs. Combining clients merges the duplicate into the one you keep, so its history lives in one place instead of two.

Only owners and admins can combine clients.

Starting a combine

There are two ways in:

From a client's page, open the menu next to Edit and choose Combine with another client. Pick the duplicate from the list, then continue.
From Match clients (Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks), if you pick a QuickBooks customer that's already linked to another client, the row offers "Combine the two clients?" right there — for the case where the duplicate is exactly this: the same company, entered twice, each linked to a different QuickBooks customer.

Either way lands you on the same confirmation.

Choosing which one to keep

You'll see both clients side by side, with the one linked to QuickBooks (if either is) picked for you — keeping that one means its QuickBooks link doesn't have to move. You can pick the other one instead if you'd rather.

Everything on the client you don't keep moves onto the one you do: its projects, invoices, contacts, and adjusters. The confirmation lists exactly what's about to move before you commit.

If the client you keep is linked to QuickBooks and the other one has invoices already synced there, those invoices switch over to the kept client's QuickBooks customer and keep syncing from then on.

When both are already linked to QuickBooks

If each client is linked to a different QuickBooks customer, Operant won't guess which one is right — combine them in QuickBooks first:

In QuickBooks, rename one of the two customers to match the other's name exactly.
Confirm the merge prompt QuickBooks shows you.
Come back here and press Check again.

Once QuickBooks shows one customer instead of two, the combine goes ahead as usual.

What happens to the other client

The client you didn't keep is archived. Its record still exists — you can find it if you go looking — but it drops out of the client list, search, and every picker, and its own page just forwards you to the client you kept.