The answer is a new utility, the Mass Updater from Karl Irvin. Karl has long been one of the leading providers of utilities designed for QuickBooks. His Data Transfer Utility is known by most QuickBooks professional as the primary tool to directly transfer data from one QuickBooks file to another.
A few months ago I approached Karl with a request: “What can you quickly write to help me update a specific piece of data in a few hundred transactions?” Within a day Karl had developed a test version of a product that did exactly what I needed done. I then mentioned to him that I felt such an update tool would be warmly received within the QuickBooks professional community. Shortly thereafter Karl was cranking out one beta-test version after another, each providing more and more functionality. The tool Karl has developed, and which is now commercially available, far exceeds anything I could have envisioned, as it addresses not only information within the ‘header’ of the various QuickBooks transactions, but also the line items for those transactions. For example, here are the fields that can be updated for a vendor bill.
The Mass Updater can update a variety of fields for QuickBooks transactions including:
- Bills
- Bill Payment Checks
- Checks
- Credit Card Charges
- Credit Card Credits
- Credit Memos
- Deposits
- Estimates
- Inventory Adjustments
- Invoices
- Item Receipts
- Journal Entries
- Purchase Orders
- Receive Payments
- Sales Orders
- Sales Receipts
- Vendor Credits
For a full list of the fields that can be updated see the Mass Updater Can Update page.
Installing the Program
Installation is simple. Purchase the product and download the installer to your computer. This will be installed on a workstation where you have the QuickBooks desktop client installed. 
The program requires a copy of Microsoft Access. The 2nd step of the install process confirms this requirements and gives you the opportunity to install the free ‘Runtime’ edition of either MS Access 2000 or MS Access 2007, if you don’t already have a copy of Access or one of the Runtime versions.
Once the installation is complete, the following screen will be displayed.
After you have installed the program you need to authorize a connection to your QuickBooks company file.
Start QuickBooks and open your company file. If you have multiple company files, be sure to open the file that has the data you need to update, as each company file must be authorized separately. Log in to the company file using the Admin user account.
Click the desktop icon for the Mass Updater utility. If you get an error message that Windows does not know which program to open Mass Updater with, then you do not have a copy of Microsoft Access 2000 to 2010, or one of the free MS Access Runtime versions, installed on the computer. You can resolve this by starting the Mass Updater installation process again, and when the second screen (shown above) opens you can select a link to download one of the two free programs.
The main Mass Updater window will appear as shown below. Click the Open button at the right side of line 1. The program will display the file path to your QuickBooks file in line 2.
When Mass Updater attempts to connect to QuickBooks for the first time, QuickBooks will ask if it is OK for the program to access your data. Note that you must be logged in to QuickBooks as the Admin user for this to occur. In the QuickBooks Application Certificate dialog, select the option you prefer.
- The option labeled “Yes, prompt each time” means that whenever you use Mass Updater for this company file, QuickBooks displays this dialog so you can give permission to access data. My personal opinion is that this is not really needed for this type of a utility; unlike some other 3rd party applications that you might want to authorize each time they try to connect.
- The option labeled “Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open” means that the next time you open this company file and then start the Mass Updater utility, QuickBooks will allow access without asking you for permission again. Typically I prefer to use this option for almost all third party ‘utility’ type applications since you are usually interacting with both the utility and QuickBooks during their use.
- The option labeled “Yes, always: allow access even if QuickBooks is not running” means that you can use Mass Updater whether or not this QuickBooks company file is open or not, and you won’t be asked for permission each time. However, the utility won’t cooperate, and will insist that you start QuickBooks and open a company file first, so you should not select this option.
The option to allow “access to personal data” can be ignored as this data is not needed for Mass Updater.
When you select the option you prefer, click Continue. QuickBooks displays a confirmation dialog that summarizes the permission you granted. Click Done to confirm the permissions.
Using the Program
Once you have linked Mass Updater to your QuickBooks file you are ready to being updating data in the file.
Line 3 allows you to select if the data is from the Header, which contains the source portions of the transaction, or from the Data Rows containing the target details of the transaction. Select either Header or Rows.
Line 4 allows you to select the type of transaction for update. Clicking the Change button at the right side of line 4 opens a window that allows you to select the type of transaction for update.
In our example we will be updating Invoices. Check the box for the transaction type and click Close Form to save your choice. The type of transaction you have selected is shown in line 4.
Line 5 is where the ‘magic’ begins. The drop-down box at the right will now display the various fields you can update, based on your chosen transaction type.
When you think about it, this took a lot of effort on the part of the developer because every single transaction in QuickBooks has different fields available within the Header. He could easily have decided I will just allow them to ‘update this’, or ‘update that’, but instead Karl took the time to develop his application so that it can update each field (that the SDK supports) on a transaction by transaction basis. Thanks, Karl!
In our example we are going to update “Due Dates”, so we select that field.
Line 6 contains the ‘date range’ for transactions to update. This is the actual transaction date, not the date the transaction was entered, nor the ‘due date’ of the transaction. Select the dates from either the drop-down choices or enter a starting and ending date.
This line also contains a button labeled Additional Criteria. When clicked, the ‘Additional Filter Criteria’ dialog box opens.
This allows you to further refine the data in the field that will be selected for potential update. There are two different dialog boxes providing a wide variety of filters. You can use any combination of filters, with each filter further refining the data filtered by each of the other filter choices. To access the second screen of filters, click the more2 button shown in the red circle above.
Once you have made your filter selections, click the Close Form button on each window to return you to the main Mass Updater window.
You are now ready to proceed to Line 7 which begins the process of exporting the data you have selected. Click the Export button on the right side of line 7.
Mass Updater locates all of the transactions that match your criteria. To see the selected transactions click the Open button on Line 8.
This opens the Change Fields window.
You can either hand-pick the transactions you want to change, or you can use the Change Value From and Change Value To fields to further filter your selection. For example, I selected existing due dates of 2016-10-31 to be changed to 2016-11-03 and the program automatically marked the appropriate transactions when I click the Change button (see the ‘Y’ indicator in the To Be Changed box along the right hand side of the window).
Your actual QuickBooks data is not updated until you finish the update process from the main screen and import the changes back to QuickBooks. Click the Close Form button to return to the main screen.
Upon returning to the main screen, you are ready to import your changes back into QuickBooks. Click the Update button on Line 9 to start the process.
The time it takes to update your data is directly related to the amount of data being changed. You can display a report of the updated data by clicking the View button on Line 10.
Updating Transaction Rows
There really isn’t much difference in updating Row data as opposed to Header data using this utility. You follow all the same steps, selecting Rows in Line 3 rather than Header. The process of selecting transaction type and other criteria remains the same as before.
In the example shown below the ClassRef (Class) field has been selected for update. Using this example you could quickly change all transactions with a class of “Landscaping” to a class of “Maintenance” in seconds.
Transfer Data between ‘Other fields’
As if the ability to update Header and Row data wasn’t enough, Karl didn’t stop there; he tossed in a big extra that some users may find warrants use of the Mass Updater just for this unique feature. Mass Updater can transfer data from the “Other 1” and “Other 2” fields to “Custom” fields.
Why would you want to do this?
When QuickBooks began allowing users to customize templates Intuit quickly determined that users wanted to ‘add information’ to transaction headers or row columns and so the ‘Other’ (Header field), ‘Other 1’ and ‘Other 2’ (Row fields) were made available for this purpose. The limited availability of Custom fields (as part of QuickBooks lists) made the ‘other’ fields very popular, but there was one big problem: QuickBooks reports did not always allow this data to be displayed, nor did those reports permit this data to be used for filtering or sorting purposes.
As the number and type of Custom fields associated with lists expanded, users wished they had a way to transfer data they had previously entered in ‘other’ fields to Custom Fields. Until now users had to manually rekey ‘other’ data within transactions into custom fields added to the same transaction-type templates, but the Mass Updater can handle this for you.
To use this feature, you go through all the same steps until you get down to Line 8, where you then click the Update CF’s button.
This opens the Transactions with Other Data window.
You can then choose to transfer data from any Other1 field to any Custom Field you have already created in QuickBooks. The name you specify for the Custom Field must exactly match how you have configured them. When you are ready to perform this step, click the Copy button and your data will be transferred.
Summary
In conclusion I can only say that I love the Mass Updater utility. It delivers all it promises – it gives users the ability to make mass changes to QuickBooks data that may have been created in error due to some clerical mistake or import error.
The Mass Updater utility works with the US versions of QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2009 through 2013, and Enterprise versions 9 through 13. The price is $79.00 per license.
This post was written by William Murphy.