Contacts represent both customers and vendors in Ambrook. You can manage your contacts by going to Settings → Contacts. You can also access customers and vendors from invoices and bills, respectively.
You can add contacts to Ambrook in three ways:
Manually create contacts one at a time
Import contacts from QuickBooks Online
Bulk import contacts from an Excel spreadsheet
How to manually add contacts
Go to Contacts
Click New Contact
Select if the contact is Customer, Vendor, or both
Fill out the rest of relevant information
Click Save
How to import your contacts from Quickbooks Online
Go to Contacts
Click the dropdown button next to New Contact
Click Import from Quickbooks
Note: Ambrook currently supports direct imports from QuickBooks Online only. QuickBooks Desktop imports are not supported.
How to import your contacts via Excel
Go to Contacts
Click the dropdown arrow next to New Contact
Select Import Excel Spreadsheet
Click Download Contacts Excel Template
Format your spreadsheet using Ambrook’s template
Click Upload Contacts Excel and select your file
You can also start a contacts import from the Imports tab by going to: Settings → Import → Contacts.
Tip: To speed up formatting, you can use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude. Upload both your existing spreadsheet and Ambrook’s template, then use a prompt like: Convert my spreadsheet to match Ambrook’s contacts import template exactly. Preserve all existing contact information and map each column from my spreadsheet to the closest matching column in the Ambrook template.
When creating customer and vendors, there are several options to store relevant information:
Create Subcontacts
If your customer has a shipping and billing address, you can use the subcontacts to keep information for both instances. You may also want to send an invoice to multiple email addresses, which you can select when you send the invoice.
Internal information
You can add additional information about the customer or vendor, such as the Delivery Location and any internal notes about the customer.
Track Legal and Bank information
Store sensitive information like EINs and SSNs, and store routing and account numbers for direct deposit bill payments via ACH. Only admins on your account will be able to view and edit. You can also check the checkbox Track payments for 1099 for vendors that will need a 100 at the end of the year.
Attach important tax documents to a Vendor contact
Use this to collect W9s and other key information necessary for tax prep.
Tracking vendor expenses
Ambrook has a variety of features that allow you to track information related to your contacts, including:
How much your customers owe you, and who is delayed in their payments
How much you owe your vendors, and where you might be overdue on your bills
1099 vendors to be able to support tax filing at the end of the year.
1099-eligible vendors that you work with. Use these to keep your vendor contact information up-to-date throughout the year, and avoid the tax prep rush in spring.
Review vendor payments for 1099 filing: Use the 1099 Payments report to identify vendors who may require a 1099-NEC and summarize how much you paid them. You can select a date range, include unrecorded transactions, and filter to only vendors with Track 1099 Payments enabled and at least $600 in payments. For general spend analysis (not 1099-specific), you can still download an Expenses by Vendor report from Settings → Export.
Add legal details to a Vendor contact: Under Settings → Contacts, you’ll find a list of your customers and vendors. Selecting a contact will open up a panel with a variety of informational fields, including a Legal section. Use this to store sensitive information such as EINs and SSNs – only admins on your account will be able to view and edit. You can also use the checkbox "Track payments for 1099" on a vendor for those you expect to need an 1099 at the end of the year.
Other Tips
You can export customer and vendor statements from contact profiles as well. Just click into the contact and select Export Statement, which is downloadable as a PDF or excel. Learn more about tracking your Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) in Ambrook here.
You can also associate transactions with a contact to quickly see activity associated with a particular contact.
To delete a contact, you can go to Settings --> Contacts --> click into the contact --> click "Archive Contact".