How customers and vendors are stored differently across systems

“A customer” sounds like the most universal thing in bookkeeping, and yet no two systems store one the same way. These structural differences are invisible day-to-day and become very visible the moment you move data between systems.

Separate lists vs. unified contacts

QuickBooks keeps customers and vendors as distinct lists — a name is one or the other. AccountEdge stores everyone as “cards” in a single file, distinguished by type. So the first thing a migration does is decide which destination list each source record belongs in — and split a unified file apart, or reconcile the same party appearing as both.

How balances are stored

Some systems store a customer’s balance as a single opening-balance figure; others as the sum of individual open invoices. These aren’t equivalent — a lump-sum balance has no aging detail and can’t have payments applied to specific invoices. Migrating balances as a lump when the destination expects itemised open documents breaks aging and payment application. Balances have to move as itemised open items.

Sub-customers, jobs and hierarchy

QuickBooks has sub-customers and jobs nested under a parent; other systems use projects or flat structures. A source that tracks jobs has to have that hierarchy deliberately re-created, or the relationships flatten and detail is lost.

Identifiers don’t transfer meaning

As with duplicates, each system’s internal IDs are meaningless in the next, so records are re-matched on content — which is exactly why de-duplication and careful mapping matter so much on the way across.