My QuickBooks Customers or Vendors Are Suddenly Gone

Posted on by | 67 Replies

QuickBooks file missing customers and vendor piecesWe’ve been hearing from a number of users in the last month about this problem.

One day, everything is fine. Then suddenly, the users notice that a lot of their bills, or bill payments, or invoices have missing vendor or customer information. The name, in particular. Or their customer or vendor lists go blank. This is called list damage in a QuickBooks file.

Rebuilding the file in QuickBooks doesn’t seem to help; rebuild fails.

The problem is usually repairable. But it is still a bit of a mystery as to why we’re seeing more instances of list damage than usual (We’ve seen and repaired this problem over the years, but it has not been commonplace.)

Anyone seen this problem recently? Did the problem seem to appear randomly, or in association with something else happening in QuickBooks?

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67 thoughts on “My QuickBooks Customers or Vendors Are Suddenly Gone”

  1. Hi Shannon,
    This is happening with our quickbooks too. If it’s not one thing with this program, it surely is another.
    Wouldn’t it be great if the software actually worked the way it was supposed to? Especially since we pay so much money to quickbooks. And, even better, wouldn’t it be great if the quickbooks “support” techs were to actually able to fix the problem when you spend countless hours on the phone with them?
    Quickbooks is a complete disaster.

    Reply ↓

  2. Hi Lyn,

    So did anything else happen in QuickBooks about the same time that you started missing customers or vendors? A new update of QuickBooks or Windows, a power or network glitch…anything like that?

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  3. We appear to have had a power failure over the weekend, but quickbooks was working fine earlier this morning, but then suddenly crashed just before lunch. We had to restore our back up from Friday but lost all of our work (once again!!!). We have had certified quickbooks reps come out to try to “fix” our QBs, we have tried to use customer support via phone and internet to “fix” our QB, yet we continue to have more and more problems with the system.
    will try this next:
    http://blog.quickbooksusers.com/quickbooks/a-hidden-quickbooks-tool-for-when-reinstalling-doesnt-work/

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  7. Yes REBOOT.BAT re- registers the QuickBooks files in the Windows registry. In the past there have been issues with .NET when updating Windows and/or QuickBooks. To correct .NET, un-install each version and restart the PC after each one. After all versions on .NET are removed, install the latest version of .NET.

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  9. SO- what can you do? We had storms come through our area and when we logged onto Quickbooks all our customer info and employee info was gone. Everything else was there, but their information was gone.
    Is there a way to restore this? Unfortunately we had NOT done a backup since we started the system. Would Quickbooks have this in their central system????? Tried to restore our computer to 5/20, and when I did it wouldn’t even let me log into Quickbooks. It kept kicking me out, so I had to undo the restore. At least I can log in, and we have everything, but do we really have to manually try to match all these transactions and put ALL this info back into our system again???

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  10. Keli, sorry to hear of that trouble you’re having. If you don’t have a current backup, your best bet is probably to get your existing data repaired. Give us a call at 1-800-999-9209 for details.

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  11. Try this:

    Banking/Write checks
    In Pay to the Order of Field, put cursor and click Ctrl L
    Click Name tab at lower left of Names list
    Resort list
    check your list again

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  13. This very problem happened with our quickbooks software today. All of the sudden vendors, customers and employees files are missing

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  14. Has anyone experienced issues with loss of a/p history? The integrity of the vendor, employee… modules does not appear to have been affected.

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  15. The same thing happened to me. All customers missing and thousnds of invoices are now unassigned. It happened after installing a bunch of Windows critical updates in Vista, that included .NET framework files.

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  17. hi folks,

    so i see all this talk about vendors and customer gone missing and qb support being useless but i have yet to see where anyone has found a concrete solution to this problem. anyone?

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  19. Ours occurs when logging in and the entire item list is gone both in current docs being created and past docs. It seems a reboot of QuickBooks solves this but doesn’t fix it

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  20. Darcy, yes, once that happens, rebooting isn’t going to fix it. Your options would be to restore your last good backup made prior to the problem occurring, or getting your file repaired.

    Thanks for the note.

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  21. Logged on this morning and Customers, Vendors, and Employees are all gone. Invoices, Estimates, and Check Registers are fine. Rebuild didn’t work and my back-up is really old. Since the Invoice/Estimates are there can I just import my Customer/Vendor/Employee lists from an excell spreadsheet and fill in any blanks? I would really hate to go back to April 2012 and catch-up.

    Reply ↓

      • Hi Kathy,

        It’s not absurd — it takes a good deal of time and specialized skill to fix these problems. We repaired this very problem for a client this last weekend (Memorial Day weekend) and he was delighted with the results.

        The most cost-effective solution is to always have good current backups. If you don’t, then it is going to cost you one way or another.

        Thanks for your comment.

        Reply ↓

  23. Well I had a major issue too. Thrusday I was looking in my customer center and noticed alot of customers had credits. Over 100 of them. When I looked at all transactions all I could see was a payment. When I clicked on the payment I was able to see an invoice where it had been applied. When I opened the invoice the cutomer: job was blank. I called quickbooks and the remote accessed my quickbooks and found no problems. Looked to see if there where any virus attacking quickbooks and found none. Any Ideas on how this could have happened. Also the invoices I was finding where speratic but where all past my closing dates and required a password to change. I managed to fix them all but am scared it may happen again. Any Ideas?

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  25. Thank you. I have ran the rebuild. I am going to back up everyday before I leave. Had 164 pages in my audit trail where I had repaired. Don’t want to have to do that again :(. Do you know what caused the corruption?

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  27. I just had the same problem, lost all my customers, vendors and employees but all the data is still there. And the system thinks the employee is there as I tried to enter but it knows the social security number is the same. SO what to do. How long does it take to have repaired and what cost. It simply needs to map the names to the rest of the data QB has. I backed up on Sunday so I could just recover but it seems a simple solution should be available. No, rebuild did not work and it was not a surge, we are on a remote cloud account.

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  29. We updated to Enterprise 13.0 recently. Everything was good, but one employee was missing the payroll tab under employess. I called QB and was connected to a person who spoke broken english out of the Phillipines. We were on the phone for almost 2 hrs as she walked me through several different fixes. We finally got the tab to show, but now all of our empoyee data is gone. Called QB again and talke to broken english speaking Indian from Phllipines. He remoted in to our computer and could not fixed, he connected me to English speaking man in Oregon. He remoted in to our system, tried to do several rebuilds and never could fix problem. He created a portable file and sent to the next level. QB now has the portable file plus another recent back up file and is trying to get our employee info back. Oh yeah, also when we converted over to 13.0, you have to create a backup file. That file is nowhere to be found??? Anyone having these problems????

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  31. My vendor names also disappeared today. I ran the “restore” from the quickbooks online backup service and the problem still appeared to be there. I then rebooted my computer and everything is working fine. I don’t know if the rebooting would have fixed the problem by itself without the “restore” process because I didn’t try that first.

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  33. I am losing customers in quickbooks. I use qxpress for scheduling and the customer appears on the routing list for qxpress. When I go into qxpress (which uses qb customer database) some of the customer/jobs are gone. My client has Vista and QB 2012 and we are upgrading to Windows 7 to hopefully solve this problem. Any body else have this problem.

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  34. I have been having this problem also, I have enterprise 13, we are on a server and my customers and invoices are disappearing. I do a search for one of the unpaid invoices and I can open it up, I go to inactive customers and they are there showing active. I close out the inactive and they do not appear in the active. Trying to rebuild currently will let you know.

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  36. Has anyone had any issues with the class list? I noticed that some of our class lists are missing. Same problem as much of the above people. Last week they were there, and now nothing. Suggestions?

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    • Geoff,

      The problem can occur with any list, including classes. Same solution as before: if rebuilding doesn’t fix it, then you can either get your file repaired or restore your last good pre-corrupted backup.

      Thanks for the question.

      Reply ↓

      • Well here’s what i discovered. After trying to reload the most recent backup, i searched where the class list has sub classes like it should, but it was like it was never existed at all. Even the backup showed that it was never there. The guys at QB tech support never could figure out why it was like that. I’ve spent this past week reorganizing it to it’s original form, but i have how to stop this from happening again. Any help here would be appreciated!!

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  37. So it appears that despite constant warning the process of a good verified data backup is still not seen as an inexpensive option? Also, I have found when using estimates and sales orders to create invoices that changes to the estimate and or/invoice after completion of the invoice can cause issues. If only using invoices you can do about anything without corruption.
    I also recommend maintenance, build a portable file, restore and create the QBW file. If you can’t get data verified in the backup you have issues. Making a copy of the QBW is NOT the same as a good backup.
    I fly and ride off road vehicles. If you refuse to do maintenance you should be in good shape because some day you will have to walk back out. Tiresome and expensive.
    This is functional but not robust software sitting atop old DB architecture.
    Shannon, thanks for your help in the past.
    Reisse L. Perin CPA, QB Pro and IT old school.

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  38. recently in quickbooks I lost all of my customer list. I am unable to view or add new. But the customers are still there and able to bill and receive. My backup is two months old and I hate to lose data. Any sujustions

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  39. We have our system in multi-user mode. We have 2 people looking at the quickbooks file. One user see’s all of the customers and jobs that we have and the other user does not. Why would two users looking at the same file see something different? This is a situation that just started in the last two weeks.
    Thank you

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Debbie,

      Sometimes username data gets corrupted and they will get errors that other users don’t get. Maybe you could try rebuilding the file and see if that fixes it.

      Thanks for the question.

      Reply ↓

  40. Switching between single user and multi user will usually bring the lists back. This is only a temporary solution however, as the problem keeps reoccurring. Anybody hear of any permanent solutions? Trying to get this problem understood.

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    • Rick,

      That’s interesting, and I had not heard of that workaround. It would seem to support the idea that sometimes user data corruption has manifestations in lists. In your instance, are certain users seeing the problem and others not? If that is so, if you delete the problematic users and recreate them, does that fix the problem?

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  41. we have a lot of data lost in customer payments leaving overpayments and some credits. it has been sometime since this has happened. some has sowed up in record deposits and recently a lot has showed up in the reminder list. it showed some in money to deposit and overdue invoices and on is credit memo to an invoice. we could not figure out what happened until I happened to find your website. please help! thank you!

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    • Hi Theresa,

      Sometimes there is a kind of data corruption where payments lose their link to the invoices they are supposed to pay, and the invoices show unpaid even though they are not. If that is happening in your situation, the only recourse is to delete the payment and re-enter it. If there are a lot of those or they are old, then that would be a hassle, but I don’t know of another way. Thanks for the question.

      Reply ↓

    • Prokash,

      QuickBooks doesn’t really use that term, but in accounting software in general, it refers to accounting subsections: accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, payroll, etc. Thanks for the question.

      Reply ↓

  44. I went to create an Invoice for a recurring customer & his name doesn’t come up.
    I have received 4 payments from him & its as if he is a new Customer to be entered.

    Why is this?
    Do I need to re-create him as a New Customer?
    What happened to the previous recorded payments? I can’t locate them.

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  45. I just check my banking/QB payments & 95% of my customer names have been deleted.
    Instead of the Customer names it just comes up at “Account Receivables”.

    How do I fix this?

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  46. All of a sudden, My QB file desktop 2015 auto re-built by itself and some of data is been disappeared, The file size 1.8 MB and been reduced to 1.78 MB … Now can i retrieve all the data lost…

    Can you please help or suggest me on this….

    Reply ↓

  47. I looked for a customer’s history on my QB for Mac and her name did not appear. I located a prior order by doing a Find on one of her items. Why has her history disappeared? I verified my data file and
    did a rebuild….neither corrected the problem.

    Reply ↓

  48. Why does QB not have a fix for this?? Why would a file get corrupted? How can I guard against losing my customer list again?? Once a month I go backwards, restoring from a backup… Loss of time and resources.

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  49. As I speak I am going though my 2nd data corruption issue in the past 40 days. This is becoming a very big pain for us. I am seriously thinking about starting a new company file. I wonder why intuit can’t verify the data file before doing the intuit protect backup?

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Charles,

      Sorry to hear that, sounds like a real hassle. I think your idea about verifying data integrity sounds good and perhaps you could suggest it to Intuit. In the meantime, you might consider doing a manual verify of your data on a daily basis to screen for new problems. Thanks for your question.

      Reply ↓

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