Set up a client

Adding a customer so you can book jobs against them, invoice them, and price their work.

Before you start

Have the client’s trading name, billing address and main contact details to hand. You do not need their pricing yet — rates are set up on the client record afterwards.

Steps

1. Go to Admin Manager›Business›Clients. You will see a list of the clients that already exist, with Name, Code, Id, City, State and Active columns.
2. Check the client is not already there. Type part of their name into the search box above the list. If your company has a lot of inactive records, set the Active / Inactive filter to Both so you can see them all.
3. Create the record. There are two ways, and the second is usually faster:
   • Use the + control above the list to start from a blank form.
   • Or find a similar existing client and use the copy control on its row. That opens a new record pre-filled from the one you copied, which saves re-entering shared details.
4. Fill in the General tab. The client’s name and short code are the two that matter most — the code is what identifies them in lists and reports throughout the system.
5. Enter the address. Start typing in the Street field and pick the match from the suggestions; the rest of the address fills itself in. Correct anything it gets wrong, and add a unit or floor separately if you need to.
6. Add the contact details you have — phone, mobile, email. These are what the system uses to reach the client about their jobs.
7. Check the settings near the bottom of the tab. Date Joined is filled in with today’s date, and Active is already ticked, so a new client is usable straight away. Set Client Type if your company uses it.
8. Press Save, at the top right. Cancel discards everything.

The rest of the record

A client is more than the General tab. Across the top there are twelve tabs, and most of them only matter once the client is live:

Tab	What it is for
General	Name, address, contact details, status
Account Details	Billing and account settings
Available Services	Which of your services this client may use
Rates	What you charge them
Additional Charges	Extras such as waiting time or tolls
Client Speed Markups	Adjustments by service speed
Job Refs	Reference fields that appear on their jobs
Turnover	Their volume with you
Contacts	The individual people at the client
Communications	What gets sent to them, and when
History	What has changed on this record
Edited	Recent edits

You do not have to complete all of them now. Get the General tab right, save, and come back for services and rates when you set up their pricing.

Where pricing is maintained afterwards

Day-to-day pricing changes for an existing client are made in the Client Manager app, not here. Client Manager cannot create a client — it maintains ones that already exist, along with their pricing and schedules.

What varies at your company

The lists on this form — Client Type, Referral Source, DropOff Report, Staff — are all filled from your own company’s setup, so what you see will differ from another company’s. The same is true of the services and rates you can attach to the client. If an option you expect is missing, it needs adding to that list first.

What’s always the same

Every client record has the same twelve tabs, in the same order. A new client always starts marked Active. And nothing is written until you press Save — moving between tabs does not save.

If something goes wrong

You cannot find a client you are sure exists. Set the Active / Inactive filter to Both. Inactive clients are hidden by default.

You are not sure whether it saved. Go back to Admin Manager›Business›Clients and search for the name. If it is in the list, it saved.

Related

• Admin Manager overview
• Client Manager — maintaining a client afterwards