I often have the problem that the autosuggest isn’t flexible enough, and I need to show contact name AND client name in the drop down

Here is a way you can ‘hack’ the default set up:

$.ui.autocomplete.prototype._renderItem = function(ul, item) {
    var new_string = "<div style='width:450px;'>
                      <div style='width:200px; float:left;'>" + 
                      item.contactname + 
                      "&nbsp;</div>
                      <div>" + item.companyname + "</div></div>";

        return $("<li></li>")
            .data("item.autocomplete", item )
            .append("<a>" + new_string + "</a>")
            .appendTo(ul);
 };

Now, obviously the function that returns the data for the autosuggest needs to have these new fields in it (companyname, etc), a bit like this:

foreach ($data as $row) {
    $array[] = array(
        "value"       => $row['contactname'],
        "companyname" => $row['companyname'],
        "contactname" => $row['contactname'],
        "contactID"   => $row['contactID']
        );
}
echo json_encode($array);

EASY