It is not true that they are rarely used. They are used a lot for sole proprietors who pay for things on personal credit cards or by other personal funds. In Quickbooks desktop the names show in all reports and also searches by name show the journal entries. In QB online the names do not show in reports if they have been entered in journal entries and search by name does not bring up the journal entries that the names have been entered into. This is not making it easy to use. I hope they fix this.