Add a customer
Create the customer record you bill on invoices, with their contact details, billing address and posting groups.
Before you start
- Set up posting groupsOnly if your company takes accounts from posting groups. The customer's groups decide the receivable, sales and VAT accounts.
- Set up customer posting groupsOnly if your company takes accounts from posting groups. The customer posting group gives the receivable account.
- Set up reminder policiesOnly if this customer should get payment reminders on a different timetable from your company default.
Every invoice is for a customer, so add the customer before you bill them. A customer is either a business or an individual person.
Steps
Open Sales › Customers
In the menu on the left, select Sales, then Customers. Select Add New. The Create customer panel opens on the right.
- Add New opens the Create customer panel.
If your company has no customers yet, the list says No customers yet and offers an Add customer button that does the same as Add New.
Fill in who the customer is
- Customer Type: choose Business for a company or Individual for a person. The fields below change to match.
- For a business, enter the Company Name. For an individual, enter the First Name and Last Name. The display name fills itself in from these.
- Add the Email and Phone Number. A Nigerian number must start with +234 or 0, for example 08012345678.
- Save creates the customer. Fill in the sections below first.
For a business you can also add a Contact Person, the Company Address and a Website.
Add the billing address
In Billing Address Details, choose the Country. It's required. State, City, Zip Code and Address are optional.
Check the posting groups
The posting groups decide which accounts this customer's invoices post to. Leave them on Organisation default unless your accountant tells you otherwise.
- Customer posting group gives the receivable account.
- General business posting group says who the customer is to you, for example domestic or export. Together with each item's product group, it picks the sales account.
- VAT business posting group, together with each item's VAT product group, picks the VAT treatment.
Set payment reminders (optional)
- Reminder policy: keep Organisation default, or pick another policy for this customer. A single invoice can still have its own policy. Policies are set up in Set up reminder policies.
- Exclude from payment reminders: turn this on to stop automatic reminders for this customer. Send reminder on an invoice still works.
Save
Select Save. You'll see Customer created successfully, and the customer appears in the list. You can now choose them in Customer Name when you create an invoice.
Export your customer list to Excel
You can download your customer list as an Excel file, for example to check details or share them with your accountant.
- In Sales › Customers, search or filter the list if you only want some customers.
- Select Export at the top right of the list. The menu says Export all customers matching the search and filters.
- Select Export to Excel. The button reads Exporting… while the file is made, then the file downloads.
- Export opens the menu.
- Export to Excel downloads every matching customer.
The file covers every customer that matches your search and filters, on all pages, not just the page you see. It's headed with your company's letterhead name and the search and filters you used, with the newest customers first. It has these columns: Customer Number, Customer Type, Name, Company, Contact Person, Email, Phone, Country, State, City, Address, Website and Date Created, and a total line with the number of customers.
To export only some customers, tick them in the list first. The menu then says Export … selected customers and offers Export as CSV and Export as XLSX, which download just those rows.
If something goes wrong
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Company name is required | Enter the Company Name, or switch Customer Type to Individual. |
| First name is required / Last name is required | Enter both names for an individual. |
| Please enter a valid email address | Check the email for typos, such as a missing @. |
| Please enter a valid Nigerian phone number (+234XXXXXXXXXX or 0XXXXXXXXXX) | Enter 11 digits starting with 0, or +234 followed by 10 digits. |
| Country is required | Choose a country in Billing Address Details. |
| This list has … customers, more than the 50,000 an export can hold. Narrow the filters and export again. | Search or filter the list so fewer customers match, then export again. |
| The report could not be exported. Please try again. | The Excel file couldn't be made. Wait a moment and select Export to Excel again. |
| Customers could not be loaded | The list didn't load. Select Try again. If you see You do not have access to this, ask an administrator for the permission. |
| No customers match your search | Change or clear the search and filters. |