Each list in your company data file can contain up to a maximum number of list entries.
List limit for QuickBooks Desktop for Windows
List name1 | Max number of entries (Pro, Premier) | Max number of entries (Enterprise) |
Chart of Accounts | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Total names: Employees, Customers, Vendors, and Other Names combined | 14 500 (individual limits of each list is 10 500 | >100 0002 |
Items, including inventory items (group items can contain only 20 individual items) | 14,500 | >100 0003 |
Items in an inventory assembly or sub-assembly | 100 | 500 |
Job types | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Vendor types | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Customer types | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Payroll items | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Price Levels | 100 | 750 |
Classes | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Terms for receivables and payables | 10 000 | 29 000 |
Payment methods | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Shipping methods | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Customer messages | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Ship To addresses | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Memorized reports | 10 000 | 29 000 |
Memorized transactions | 10 000 | 50 000 |
To Do notes | 10 000 | 100 000 |
Sales Reps | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Sales Tax Codes | 10 000 | 10 000 |
Group Items & Sales Tax Group Items | 50 | 50 |
Advanced Inventory Sites | N/A | 1 000 000 |
Advanced Pricing Price Rules | N/A | 100 000 |
Contacts | No limit | No limit |
Custom Fields | 20 | 45 |
Item custom field
|
5 | 15 |
Customers/Vendors/Employees custom fields
|
154 | 304 |
1Some of the items in the list are not available in earlier versions of QuickBooks Desktop for Windows.
2QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise 14.0 and later versions allow you to add up to one million names (e.g. customers, vendors, employees) and up to one million items (e.g. inventory, non-inventory, and service items). Some performance degradation is likely as your lists approach these size thresholds.
3 Current QuickBooks Desktop users can check the size and or lists of their QuickBooks Desktop company file by pressing the F2 key or Ctrl + 2 and look for File Size in the File Information section of the window or List Information section.
4Customers/Vendors/Employees - 15 and 30 totals are a combination of custom fields for customers, vendors and employees.
- In Pro/Premier, although there is a total of 15 custom fields, you cannot have more than 7 per category. For example, you could only have 7 custom fields for customers, 7 for vendors and 1 for employee.
- In Enterprise Solutions, although there is a total of 30 customer fields, you cannot have more than 12 per category. For example, you could only have 12 custom fields for customers, 12 for vendors and 6 for employee.
QuickBooks Desktop is designed for small businesses with 20 or fewer employees and annual revenue of less than two million dollars. The ideal use of QuickBooks Desktop is to keep at least two years of detailed transactions in a company data file so that you can run comparative reports and have prior-year project information.
The rate of growth of QuickBooks Desktop company data files varies significantly from company to company. There is no "average" or "typical" data file size, since businesses track different information. How quickly a file grows depends on the number of transactions, the amount of information entered per transaction, and the number of "links" per transaction.
For example, someone who enters 500 1-line invoices per month might find that their data file is smaller than another person who enters 100 5-line invoices per month, while someone who usually receives five separate payments per invoice would have a larger file than someone who typically receives only one payment per invoice.
To estimate if QuickBooks is right for your small business, take the average number of monthly transactions (remember, an invoice, payment, and deposit would be three separate transactions, and a bill and bill payment would count as two), and multiply by 2 KB to determine approximately how much the data file will grow each month.
For example, if your company enters an average of 300 transactions per month, the data file would grow approximately 600 KB per month (300 x 2 KB = 600 KB) or 7200 KB per year (600 KB x 12 = 7200 KB). If the annual data file size is less than 15,000 KB, then QuickBooks should be more than sufficient for the company. Note that the 2 KB multiplier does not include list information (which will also grow as new names are added to the file), and is only an approximation that may not be a suitable estimate for all QuickBooks company data files.
If performance becomes an issue or you decide you do not want to keep detailed transactions for prior years, you can condense a QuickBooks company data file (applicable to US only). Before you condense, please read Condensing data in the QuickBooks User's Guide (in the chapter Maintaining your data) or read the QuickBooks Help topics under the keyword condense. (Both the User Guide and QuickBooks Help are found on the QuickBooks Help menu.)