Create a customer contact

This explains how to create a customer contact. This saves time when creating transactions and allows you send invoices to your customers.

Use customer contact records to

  • Save details about the people or businesses that you regularly do business with.
  • Send physical copies of invoices by email or post.
  • Keep track of who owes you money

What you need to know

Customer records can be created with as little information as a Name.

Choose to keep our defaults or enter your own information. You can do this now or come back and edit the record at any time.

When you start entering transactions such as sales invoices, we use the information set on the customer record to determine the following

  • The default is 4900 Other Income.

  • Due date - this is set to 30 days by default.

  • VAT rate - this is determined from the customers location and whether they are VAT registered.

  • Price - set the type of price used for common products and services such as Sales Trade or Wholesale. The default is the Sales price.

  • Currency - set this if you invoice customers in their own currency. The default in your home or base currency.

In addition you can set other information such as

  • Delivery address - set this when the delivery address is different to the invoice address.

  • Bank details - Store your customer's bank account details.

  • Analysis group -

  • CIS - Set this if you are in the Construction Industry Scheme.

  • Notes - use this for any other information you’d like to store about this customer.

See the following sections for more information about each section.

Import your customer details

Import from CSV file

Consider importing customer records if you already have the details somewhere else. Just export them to a CSV file (type of Excel spreadsheet) and import all the details in one go.

You can import additional new contacts at any time.

Read more about importing customers.

Import from mobile phone

If your customer details are in your mobile phone contacts, consider importing them using our mobile app.

  1. Download the mobile app:

  2. Open the mobile app and from the menu choose Contacts. Select the plus button, then choose Import from phone.

  3. Choose Customers.

  4. From the list of contacts in your phone, choose the ones to import.

  5. Once you've imported your contacts, edit them in the mbile or web app to enter additional details.

Create a customer

For one off customers, or if you don't want to import them, create new customer records from Contacts.

  1. From Contacts, choose Customers, then New Customer.

  2. Enter the business name for the customer. This is the name you'll see on all lists when selecting this customer.

  3. Enter the remaining details.

    If you don't know all the details yet, just enter the business name and save. All other details can be entered later.

    You always need an address before you can save an invoice for a customer.

Use the following sections to choose which defaults to change and choose additional information to store about the customer.

Main address details

If you're sending invoices to your customers, you must enter an address. This is the address that appears on sales invoices.

If you want to email your sales documents, make sure you add an email address as well.

Add the main address from the Contact Details tab.

If your customer is outside the UK or Ireland, make sure your change the region just above the address and then choose the correct Country.

Tip

If you don't have an address for a customer , just use No address on the first line.

VAT details

If your customer is VAT registered, enter their VAT registration number to make sure we use the correct VAT rate when entering invoices.

Enter the VAT registration number from the Account Details tab. We check the VAT number against the Country entered in the address. You cannot save the VAT number unless it has the correct format.

VAT reverse charge

Select VAT Reverse Charge when:

Set a default

We use categories to categorise or group your transactions. This is to make sure they report correctly on financial reports, such as the Profit and Loss or Balance sheet. It also help you track your business performance and see where you making making money.

Selecting the right is key to making sure you know where your money comes from and what you are selling.

On sales invoices, you must select a on each line to indicate what you have sold. You can use our default categories or set up your own.

To make sure the right is selected automatically, you can set a default on you customer records. This is really useful if usually sell the same type of goods to a single customer.

From the Account Details tab

  • Choose the to use by default for this customer from the Account Default drop-down.

Tip

If you usually use the same for all your sales, set this in the Record and Transaction settings. Read Record and Transactions settings

Enter payment details

If you've agreed credit terms with your customer, you can record them here.

The credit terms sets the number of days an invoice is outstanding before it needs to be paid. Once set up, the due date on the invoice is worked out based on the credit terms set here.

We've set the credit terms to 30 days as this is usual for most businesses.

If your credit terms are different, set them in the Record and transaction settings so they applied to all new customer records, or if this customer has unusual credit terms, enter them here.

Store bank details

If you have bank details for any of you customers you can store them on the Payment Details tab. They are not used anywhere and are just for your information.

Set a customer as CIS contractor

If you're in the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS), make sure you set up new or existing customers as contractors so we automatically deduct CIS from sales invoices.

  1. From the CIS tab, select the CIS Registered checkbox. This indicates that the contact is using the CIS scheme.

  2. From the Account Details tab

    1. Set the Account Default to a CIS Labour ledger account.

      We only deduct CIS from invoice lines when you choose this on the sales invoice. Setting this as the default helps prevent errors and ensures CIS deduction are made on invoices. You can only choose a CIS  when you also choose a CIS registered customer.

    2. Choose VAT Reverse Charge if the services you usually sell to this customer fall under the reverse charge rules. Read more about Reverse charge VAT and CIS

Tip

Make sure you have turned on the CIS features in the settings first.

Read more about CIS

Notes

This is just a space for you to add any other relevant notes about your customer. The notes are not printed on any documents such as sales invoices.

About VAT contacts

If you indicated that your business is VAT registered on sign up, there will already be two contacts on the list. You'll use the HMRC Reclaimed customer contact when you reclaim VAT and the HMRC Payments supplier contact when you make VAT payments. You can change the reference for these contacts but you cannot rename or delete them.

Related content

Set up a contact as a contractor for CIS

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Delete a customer or supplier contact