Customers

You can run a shop without knowing a single customer's name. Most sales are walk-ins, and that's fine. But for your regulars, your wholesale buyers and anyone who buys on credit, a saved customer is worth having.

Once a customer is saved, every order they make is linked to them. Over time that builds into a history: what they buy, how often, and whether they've paid.

Adding a customer

Go to Customers and press Add customer. Only the first name is required.

You don't have to stop and do this from the Customers page. While recording an order, type the customer's name in the customer box. If they aren't saved yet, choose to add them. If you typed a phone number instead of a name, Tabs puts it in the phone field for you.

Walk-ins

A sale with no customer picked is a walk-in. It still counts in your sales and comes off your stock. It just isn't attached to a person.

A good rule is to save a customer when at least one of these is true:

• they buy from you often
• they buy in bulk
• they're taking goods on credit
• the order is for delivery

For someone buying a sachet of milk, a walk-in is the right choice.

A customer's page

Open a customer to see everything about them in one place:

• their contact details and notes, which you can edit there
• how many orders they've made and how much they've spent in total
• the list of their orders, each one a click away

A change to a customer's details shows everywhere they appear, including on their past orders.

This page is what makes credit manageable. Before you let someone take another ₦40,000 of goods, open their page and look at what's still open from last time.

Two records for the same person

It happens easily. One staff member saves "Mrs Adeyemi" and another saves "Funke Adeyemi", and now her history is split across two records.

Open the record you want to get rid of and choose to merge it. Search for the record to keep, pick it, and confirm.

Read this before you do it:

• The orders from the merged record move to the one you keep.
• The merged record is then deleted.
• Only orders move. The deleted record's phone number, email, notes and groups do not carry over.
• It can't be undone.

So check the record you're keeping has the right phone number and notes first. Copy anything you need across by hand, then merge.

Groups

Groups let you sort customers into sets that mean something to your business. Open the Groups tab.

1. Press New group. Give it a name and, if you like, a line about who belongs in it.
2. Open the group and press Add customers.
3. Tick the customers who belong, and add them.

A customer can be in more than one group. Someone can be both a regular and a wholesale buyer.

Groups that shop owners find useful:

• Wholesale. Shops and traders who buy in bulk.
• Regulars. People who come every week.
• Credit customers. People allowed to pay later. Keeping this group short is the whole point of having it.
• Delivery customers. People you deliver to.

Open a group to search within it or to take someone out. Removing a customer from a group doesn't delete the customer.

Deleting a group never deletes the customers in it. They stay in your customer list.

Deleting customers

Delete a customer from their row, or tick several and delete them together.

A deleted customer no longer appears in your list or in the customer picker on new orders. Their past orders stay exactly as they were, so your sales history is unaffected. Deleting can't be undone.

Customers in chat

When you need to talk to a colleague about a customer, you can tag them in a chat message. Type # and pick the customer. Your colleague can open the customer's page straight from the message.

Who can do what

Viewing, adding, editing and removing customers are separate permissions, and customer groups have their own set.

Think about who needs to see customer phone numbers. A role that can't view customers still sees a customer's name on an order, but can't open their page. Set this under roles.