🧑💼 Customers
In 30 seconds
- Customers is the workshop's contact book: every order is linked to a customer.
- Only the Username (alias) is required; the rest of the details, whenever you have them.
- The Customer type (Individual or Company) decides which details they appear with on quotes and invoices.
- A customer with orders or quotes can't be deleted.
The Customers section is the workshop's contact book. Every order is linked to a customer. No customer, no order.
The header figures
| Indicator | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Total customers | Total registered customers. |
| Repeat customers | Customers with more than one order. |
| Overall activity | Total number of orders across all customers. |
The customer list
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Customer | Full name with an automatically generated avatar and username (@). |
| Company | The legal name, for customers that are a company. Individuals show a dash. |
| Contact address. | |
| Phone | Phone number. |
| Total orders | Total number of orders for that customer. |
| Billing | Sum of the price of their orders excluding tax, paid or not. Cancelled orders don't count. It's added up in your workshop's currency: orders in another currency are included converted at their exchange rate, and those without an exchange rate are left out of the sum. |
You can sort the list by clicking on the column headers (Customer, Company, Email, Phone, Total orders or Billing).
Searching for customers
The search box filters in real time by name, username, company, email, or phone.
Adding a customer
You have two options:
- From Customers → "Add customer"
- From an order or a quote: if the customer's name doesn't appear in the list as you type it, the system offers to create a new one without leaving it.
The New customer record opens, where you fill in their details. The only required field is Username (alias), marked with an asterisk (*). All other fields are optional.
To create the customer, click Create, at the top right.
The address
The record's Address block has these fields:
- Country: chosen from a list, with a search box. If the customer has no country, or is from one that isn't on the list, choose No country / other: the record is saved without a country.
- County and Postcode.
- Town / city.
- Address: the street and number, for example 10 Example Street.
- Address (line 2): the rest, if needed: floor, door, building entrance…
A country that isn't on the list
If an old record has a country that's no longer on the list, you'll see a field with its code: choose a country from the list or clear it to save.
Individual or company
The record's Customer block ends with a dropdown, Customer type, which has two answers: Individual or Company. It's what decides which details that customer appears with on your quotes.
- Individual: their name and their identity document are printed, the field next to the surname.
- Company: two more fields appear, Legal name and Tax ID / VAT number, and those are the ones printed, never the person's.
There's a single tax ID, with no type to choose: which country it belongs to is deduced from the record's country.
Check on VIES
If the customer is a company from another European Union country (different from your workshop's), under their Tax ID / VAT number the Check on VIES button appears. It checks in the European Commission's official register whether that intra-community VAT number is valid for trading between EU countries, and shows you the answer:
- ✅ “… is valid in VIES”, with the name the company is registered under.
- ❌ “… is not in VIES”: the number doesn't exist or that company isn't registered for intra-community transactions.
- ⏳ “VIES is not responding right now. Try again later.”
Type the number with its country prefix (for example, DE123456789); the ? next to the button reminds you.
The check only informs
It doesn't save anything or change anything: neither the record nor the tax on any order. If the number is valid and you decide to sell without VAT to that company, that's up to you: set 0% on the order before creating the invoice and, in the draft, choose the reason under Sale without VAT. For a sale of products it's Intra-Community supply; if what you sell is a service, the rule is different (reverse charge). It's all in Selling without VAT.
Saving as Individual deletes the legal name and the tax ID
Until you save you can change your mind without losing anything: switching back to Company shows them again. But when you save as Individual those two fields are really emptied.
A customer's profile
Once created, clicking on a customer takes you to their profile. You'll see:
- Order activity: A summary of all the orders placed by this customer (pending, completed, and total). If you click on this section, a list appears with all the orders placed by them.
- Total billing: the sum of the price excluding tax of this customer's orders, whether paid or not, in your workshop's currency (orders in another currency, converted). Cancelled orders don't count. It's not what they've paid you: for that, check the payment status of each order.
- Contact details: full name, email, phone, etc. You can edit these details whenever you like.
- Quotes (tab): this customer's quotes with their status and their total (the same as in the quotes list), and a button to download the PDF of their most recent version.
What customer details appear on the quote
In a quote's PDF, the Customer box shows whichever of these are filled in: their first name and surname (or the alias if there's no name) with their identity document if they're an individual, or their legal name with their tax ID if they're a company; and then the two address lines, the postcode and town, the county and the country. The two sides never mix: a company doesn't print the person. The country only appears when theirs and your workshop's are different, and the customer's email and phone are never printed.
Each version of the quote keeps a copy of these details: if you change the record afterwards, the versions already generated don't change; the next one you generate comes out with the new details. More in The PDF and its versions.
And on the invoice
If your workshop issues invoices, an invoice's customer is the record of the order's customer: their details aren't typed into the invoice, they're taken from here. While the invoice is a draft it follows the record (if you correct it, the draft updates by itself); when you issue it, those details are frozen in the invoice.
Which details are needed depends on your workshop's country and on whether the customer is an individual or a company. A company is always asked for its legal name and address, and also its tax ID unless your workshop is in the United Kingdom, where it isn't asked for because many companies have no VAT number. An individual, depending on the amount. If the record is missing something, the invoice tells you exactly what and offers you Open customer record to complete it without leaving the order. More in Creating and issuing an invoice.
Deleting a customer
This is only possible if the customer has no orders and no quotes linked to them. If they have any, BolloPrint won't let you delete them and tells you how many orders or quotes they have linked.
Who can manage customers?
| Action | Read-only | Worker | Admin | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| View customers | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Create / edit | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Delete | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |