How to Migrate Customers from QuickBooks Online to Moveware (Without Duplicates)

The quick plan (what to do first)

• Export customers from QuickBooks Online into a CSV.

• Decide your unique match key for de-duping.
• Use email if it is present and reliable.
• Otherwise use phone.
• Use name only if you have strong naming consistency.

• Import into Moveware using an API-driven process that:
1. searches for an existing customer by your match key
2. creates only if not found

Why “customer-only first” is the right phase 1

• You stop “bouncing between systems” because Moveware becomes the customer directory.

• Your team can move forward even if historical invoices and quotes stay in QuickBooks.

Step-by-step: QuickBooks → Moveware customer migration

• In QuickBooks, export the customer list to CSV.

• Spot-check for:
• missing emails
• inconsistent phone formats
• duplicated names

• Display name / Company name

• Primary contact name (if separate)

• Email

• Phone

• Billing address

• Notes (optional)

• Best: email

• Good: normalized phone

• Fallback: name + billing zip code

• For each row in the CSV:
• call Moveware to search customers by match key
• if found: log as “skipped existing”
• if not found: create customer

• Count check:
• expected customers vs created customers vs skipped customers

• Duplicate audit:
• randomly sample 20 customers and verify there is exactly one record per match key

• Field audit:
• verify addresses and phone numbers stayed intact

Common problems (and how to avoid them)

• Inconsistent phone formats
• Normalize to E.164 before matching.

• Shared or generic email addresses
• Prefer phone or a composite key.

• Hidden duplicates in QuickBooks
• QuickBooks can contain near-duplicate “Display name” values.
• Clean obvious duplicates before importing.

FAQ

Next step