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9. Customers and contacts
Records, then Customers. A customer is an organisation, with one or more contacts and addresses attached. Even a walk-in becomes an organisation, which is what keeps their history, reorders and invoices together.
Getting your list in
| Route | When to use it |
|---|---|
| The setup wizard's CSV import | Bulk-loading an existing list, once |
| Create on the customers list | One at a time, as new business arrives |
| Automatically | A quote from the public shop, a team store, a campaign or the kiosk creates the customer for you |
Do the bulk import first, so the automatic route does not create duplicates of customers you were going to import anyway.
Organisation fields
| Field | Meaning | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The customer's name | Appears on quotes, invoices, the board and the portal |
| Price list | Which price list they sit on | Decides the rate they are quoted and see |
| Payment terms | Free text, for example "7 day from invoice" | Printed on the invoice and used for aging |
| Default carrier | For example "DHL eParcel" | Prefilled on dispatch |
| Stripe ID | Their Stripe customer id | Links to a saved customer in your Stripe |
| Xero/QB ID | Their contact id in your accounting system | Keeps the accounting sync matching the right contact |
| Internal notes | Anything staff should know | Never shown to the customer |
The two ID fields are usually filled in for you when the relevant integration first syncs that customer. Set them by hand only when you are matching to an existing record in the other system.
Contacts and addresses
Add a contact per person you deal with, and mark one primary: that is who gets quote, approval and dispatch messages by default.
Add addresses with billing and shipping defaults. A club with a separate delivery address for kit and a treasurer's address for invoices is the normal case, and setting both now avoids a wrong-address dispatch later.
The customer record at a glance
The detail page is built for a phone call. It shows:
| Panel | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Lifetime value, orders, open | Whether this is a big account and what is in flight |
| Health score | A 0 to 100 score with a label such as Champion, based on recency and order frequency |
| Activity | A timeline of every order, artwork send and invoice on this customer |
| Pricing and terms | Their price list, terms, carrier and integration ids |
| Contacts | Who to talk to |
| Designs library | Every design on file for them, so a reorder does not need new artwork |
| Open tasks | Anything of theirs waiting on you |
Two actions from the header are the ones you will use daily:
- + New quote starts a quote already pinned to this customer.
- Export activity (CSV) pulls their whole history out, which is what you send when a customer asks for a statement of what they have bought.
Giving a customer portal access
The portal is a separate login from a contact. Set up the customer portal first, then invite the contact. A portal user belongs to exactly one organisation and can only ever see that organisation's orders, artwork and invoices.
Housekeeping worth doing at setup
- Put every imported customer on the right price list. This is the single most common post-import miss, and it is what causes a club to be quoted retail.
- Set payment terms on your trade accounts, so aging in reports is meaningful.
- Merge duplicates before you invite anyone to the portal.