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Function to 'Copy Customer'

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Posted on by LA-13061059-0

Due to the way we want to set up our customers, I'm looking at a way to copy a complete customer card, assign a specific No. Series to the 2nd customer card and then we can make the specific changes to the fields we need to.

I'm thinking I will have to do this through Power Automate?

Essentially;

1 - copy all fields EXCEPT new from existing Customer card

2 - create new Customer based on a specific No. Series and paste all fields

3 - we manually amend the new customer to change the few necessary fields.

It's almost as if the "Copy Item" function would be fantastic for the Customer card!

Kind Regards, thanks in advance.

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Dynamics 365 Business Central

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Yi Yong 2,555 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hello,

You can try using the 'Customer Template' function.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2021wave2/smb/dynamics365-business-central/use-new-templates-same-flexibility-as-configuration-templates

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LA-13061059-0 50 on at

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Thanks for the reply - sorry I should have included that in my original post. I have to take the data at the time the customer is created - otherwise I'd have to convert that customer to a template, then create the 2nd instance from the template, then delete the template. We create on average 20-25 customers a week due to our industry, so I need to make this as efficient as possible.

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Tarik Jerkovic 111 on at

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Hi,

You cannot copy all data to another customer because it doesn't make sense and it's not feasible. In many countries, including mine, it is not possible to have two customers with the same VAT No. Additionally, natively, you cannot open two customers from the same Contact etc.

Solution:

If you don't want to use Customer Templates, you can use the Configuration Package and define which fields you want to copy. Here's a step-by-step approach:

Create Configuration Package:

Navigate to the Configuration Packages page.

Create a new package and add the Customer table.

Select the fields you want to copy from the existing customer records.

Export and Modify Data:

Export the configuration package to Excel.

Modify the data in Excel, ensuring that you update the No. Series and other unique fields manually.

Import Modified Data:

Import the modified configuration package back into Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Apply the package to create new customer records with the desired copied fields.

Manually Adjust Unique Fields:

Make sure to manually check and adjust fields like No. Series, VAT No., and any other unique identifiers to ensure compliance and data integrity.

By using the Configuration Package, you can streamline the process of copying specific data fields while maintaining the necessary uniqueness for each customer record.

Kind Regards,

Tarik J

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LA-13061059-0 50 on at

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I understand your reply, but there is a reason... I don't want to go into too much of our business detail here, but essentially we will have 2 customer cards per customer... one for the shop, one for the owner. Our industry has a lot of change in shop ownership, so this setup allows us to keep and manage (analysis) at shop level, but the invoicing and debt (important part) goes to the owner.

So when I create the owner detail, which includes all of the address information, we want to copy that to the shop, then set the specific fields (pricing/VAT no/owner link - modification and a few other things on the shop card).

I'm trying to save ~30 minutes per new customer setup. As I said we have 20-25 a week, that's nearly 125 man hours saved with this automation, so there is method to my madness.

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Valentin Castravet 31,340 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I don't believe there is anything out of the box that will do this. Manually you can use config. packs or edit in excel to quickly copy the data to your new item. The best solution would be to for a developer to copy the copy item functionality so it works on customer cards.

Valentin Castravet
Work: Zander ERP Services
Blog: Dynamics 365 Business Central Insights
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-c-0500a247/

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YUN ZHU 95,331 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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It is indeed possible with Power Automate, I will have time to try it out next week.

Similar to the following method, but a little simpler than the following one.

Dynamics 365 Business Central: How to create Purchase Order from Sales Order with Power Automate (Copy lines from SO to PO)

https://yzhums.com/47471/

Thanks.

ZHU

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Saurav.Dhyani 14,380 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi,

You can do it multiple ways.

1. You can create a copy Customer functionality in Business Central like it exist in Copy Document.

2. Or you can build a custom Power automate flow to copy customer and create new one.

Both solutions work to achieve what you want.

Regards,

Saurav Dhyani

https://bit.ly/SubscribeSauravYouTube

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YUN ZHU 95,331 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi, hope the following helps.

Dynamics 365 Business Central: How to Copy Existing Customer to New Customer with Power Automate (Copy Customer)

https://yzhums.com/52636/

Thanks.

ZHU

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LA-13061059-0 50 on at

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Hi Zhu,

You are amazing. Thanks for your time and effort in creating a great walkthrough.

I've got some 'free time' later this week assigned to our BC data migration project, so I will try and put some time in testing this for my need.

Again, thanks so much.

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Thilari Hettiarachchi 83 on at

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Hi Yunzhu,

I am using power automate to create a copy customer. I am unable to map boolean fields to copy from an existing customer as system throwing an error saying unable to convert from string to boolean. Is there any suggestion for this?

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