What this screen is for
The cards at the top double as quick filters - selecting one narrows the list to active, inactive or all customers. The list itself holds the customer records the rest of the app draws on, and the header offers an import for bringing in many at once, alongside adding one by hand.
Why it matters
Everything downstream depends on these records: invoices, statements, payment allocations and marketing all reference the customer, so a duplicate or a wrong tax identifier propagates into every document raised against it. Mark a customer inactive rather than deleting them when you stop trading, so their history stays intact. Note that what customers are called here follows your Terminology settings.
What you see on this screen
Four cards head the page - total customers, active, With Invoices and inactive - and each is clickable, applying itself as a filter rather than only reporting a number.
The table has six columns plus any custom fields you have chosen to show in the list. Customer is the name and reference number. Contact is the email and phone. The third column is the tax identifier, headed to match your country - GSTIN in India, VAT number in Europe and so on. Invoices counts the documents raised against them. Status says whether they are still being traded with. Actions holds View, Edit, History and Delete.
Deleting is deliberately careful. The confirmation lists what is linked to the record - invoices, payments, journal entries - and refuses where the links make deletion unsafe. Where the same business is also a vendor, it says so and explains that deleting removes only the customer side, leaving the vendor record intact.
Filters and actions
A Search box matches name, email, phone, customer number and tax identifier. Filters reveals Status (All, Active, Inactive), Also Vendor (All, Yes, No), a tax-identifier filter (All, Yes, No) and rows per page of 20, 50 or 100. Any custom field marked as filterable also appears here. A sort control offers Latest, Name, Customer number or Email, ascending or descending. Add creates one; the import brings in many at once; History on a row shows every change made to that customer.
Status values
Active - offered when raising documents. Inactive - retained with all their history, but no longer offered.
Related
- Vendors - the purchasing side of the same idea
- Groups - grouping customers and vendors, with a discount
- Custom Fields - extra fields on the customer record