Customer Management

One directory, two roles

Customers and suppliers are not separate lists. Both are trading partners, and a partner can be both at once — which is common: the café that buys your coffee beans and also caters your staff lunches is one relationship, not two records.

Each partner is either Individual or Business. The distinction matters because a business carries a Business Profile with the company name and tax ID, and individuals do not.

For the buying side of the same screen, see Supplier Management.

Common Tasks

How to Add a Customer (create customer, new customer, add account)

Add someone you sell to, so their purchases, credit and loyalty are tracked against one record.

Required permission: Trading partner create

1. Go to Trading Partners in the left sidebar
2. Create a new partner
3. Choose Individual or Business
4. Fill in Basic Info — First Name, Last Name, phone and email — and click Save Basic Info
5. For a business, complete the Business Profile with the Company name and tax ID, then Save Business Profile
6. Add Addresses & Contacts if you deliver or invoice them, and Save Addresses
7. Mark the partner as a customer

Result: The customer can be selected at the till, on invoices and on reservations, and their history accumulates against this record.

Note: Each section saves on its own. You do not have to complete everything before the record is usable — capture the name and phone now and fill in the rest later.

How to Record a Business Customer's Tax ID (customer TIN, tax ID, taxable customer, GST registered customer)

The tax ID is what marks a customer as taxable on your GST return. This has direct consequences for your filing.

Required permission: Trading partner edit

1. Go to Trading Partners and open the customer
2. Open Business Profile
3. Enter the Company name and the tax identification number
4. Click Save Business Profile

Result: Sales to this customer are recorded against a registered tax number and appear under With Taxable Customer on the Output Tax Summary.

Note: The tax ID is captured onto each sale as it happens. Adding it later does not reclassify sales already made — see Tax Statements for how to re-stamp an existing period.

How to Find a Customer (search customer, look up customer, find account)

Search across names, companies and contact details.

1. Go to Trading Partners
2. Type into the search box — name, company name, phone or email all match
3. Filter by type — Customer, Supplier, Individual, Business
4. Filter by status — Active, Inactive, Blacklisted, or All statuses

Result: The list narrows to matching partners.

How to Merge Duplicate Customers (duplicate customer, merge partners, same customer twice)

Duplicates split a customer's history, credit position and loyalty points across two records.

Required permission: Trading partner edit (manager level)

1. Go to Trading Partners and open the quality filters
2. Choose Duplicates to list likely pairs
3. Select the records that are the same customer
4. Merge them, keeping the record with the better data as the survivor

Result: History, balances and loyalty consolidate onto one record. A confirmation reads Partners merged successfully.

Note: Check the balance on both records before merging. If each carries an outstanding amount, the merged record should show the combined position — verify it afterwards.

How to Clean Up Bad Customer Data (data quality, bad phone numbers, placeholder names, fix customer records)

Records created quickly at a till accumulate. The quality filters find the ones worth fixing.

1. Go to Trading Partners
2. Use the quality filters: Bad name, Bad phone, Placeholder names, BUSINESS w/o company, Duplicates, or Any issue to see everything at once
3. Work through the results, correcting each record

Result: Your customer directory becomes usable for reaching people and for reporting.

Note: BUSINESS w/o company is the one with financial consequences — a partner marked as a business but with no company name usually has no tax ID either, which affects your GST return.

How to Set an Opening Balance for a Customer (opening balance, customer owes us from before, migrate balance)

Use this when moving from another system and a customer already owes you money.

Required permission: Accounting (manager level)

1. Go to Trading Partners and open the customer
2. Set the opening balance
3. Enter the amount outstanding as at your cut-over date
4. Save

Result: The customer starts with the correct receivable balance, so collections and statements are right from day one.

Note: Set opening balances once, at cut-over. Adding one to a customer with trading history in Qvian double-counts what they owe.

How to Stop Selling to a Customer on Credit (blacklist customer, block customer, suspend account, bad payer)

Mark a customer so staff cannot extend them further credit.

Required permission: Trading partner edit (manager level)

1. Go to Trading Partners and open the customer
2. Set their status to Blacklisted, or Inactive if you simply no longer trade with them
3. Save

Result: The customer is flagged and credit sales to them are prevented.

Note: Blacklisting does not erase what they already owe. Their outstanding balance stays collectable — see Collect Payment.

B2B partnerships

Where the customer is another organization also using Qvian, the relationship can be a partnership rather than a plain customer record. Partnerships are approved by both sides and carry explicit permissions about what each may do:

• Allow placing purchases
• Allow viewing our service catalog
• Allow viewing our room availability
• Allow partner to make room bookings

A partnership can be approved, suspended, or terminated. Grant only the permissions the relationship actually needs — a partner who books rooms does not necessarily need to see your whole service catalogue.