Clients

The Clients page is your customer list, built automatically as customers call, book, and check in. Nobody types a CRM entry.

The list

The list filters by lifecycle (Active, Dormant, New); a row is marked only when it is Dormant or New, since Active is the normal state. Search covers name, contact info, address, and notes. Add a client manually any time.

Businesses with more than one location get a Location menu beside the lifecycle filter. This location (the default) shows the customers who belong here: added here, or with a car or a visit here. All locations shows everyone across the business, one row per person, with a badge for their home store. Pick a store by name to see just its customers. The choice sticks on that device.

The client record

Open a client and you get one header (the name, a Business chip for companies, the Account ID, the phone and email, which edit in place when you click them, and two actions: Text and Edit), one line of figures (Lifetime, Outstanding, Vehicles, Last visit), then five tabs. The record opens on Overview, or straight on Balances when an invoice is overdue. The tab is in the page address (?tab=balances), so a link from Financials or from an invoice lands on the right one.

• Overview. What is happening now: the next thing to do in one line (an overdue amount, money awaiting payment, invoices ready to send, a car in the shop, a scheduled visit, or, when nothing is waiting, the next visit: "Oil change due around Apr 21, 2027" from the customer's completed work and your shop's usual interval), the cars in the shop, running bills for work still in progress (listed, never sendable until every job on them is complete), the store credit and credit standing in one sentence, and visits at your other locations.
• Balances. Everything owed. Finished-but-unsent invoices with one Send all button; sent invoices awaiting payment with their due dates and overdue flags, each with Record payment, plus Statement (print it, send it by email or text, or copy its pay link) and, with two or more bills owed, Pay open invoices to apply one payment across them; both are described under Getting paid. Under the bills: the credit limit and store credit with their editors (below), then the payment history. The bill rows appear when the account has two or more open invoices or any bill already owed; a regular customer with one unsent draft keeps that bill on the vehicle page. The tab hides itself when there is nothing owed, no credit and no paid history. Each row opens the invoice itself, viewable and printable whatever state the visit is in.
• Vehicles. Every car they own, each with its total charged and visit count at a glance, searchable by plate, VIN, year, make, model, or the tech who worked on it, so a fleet account with thirty identical vans is a two-keystroke lookup, not a scroll. Tap a vehicle to expand its full service history: every visit with the work done, which tech did it, what it cost, and a link to the invoice. In-progress work and unpaid balances show right on the row, so fleet accounts can answer "what has this truck cost us, and who works on it" without leaving the page. Admins additionally see each vehicle's gross profit and margin inside the expanded history; service writers and technicians never see margins. Every row also carries a Check in button that opens check-in with the car and owner prefilled (vehicles currently in the shop link to their board card instead), and Add vehicle registers a car to the client without a visit: pick your way in up front, Plate (state + Look up decodes it), VIN (Decode fills the specs), or Manual entry (search "2018 F-150" or type year/make/model), add a unit number, done. Onboarding a fleet is one paste-session; every visit after is two clicks. Removing a vehicle never erases its story: any vehicle that belongs to a client stays at the bottom of the list as Removed, history still expandable, with a Restore that brings a returning vehicle back onto the same record.
• Profile. The facts, one row each: Person or Business, company name and Account ID, birthday, preferred channel (text, email, or phone; sends respect it), Text reminders (On or Off: whether service reminders and specials may go by text; quote links and receipts go either way, and a customer who replied STOP reads Off with the reason until they say yes again), payment terms, lead source, tax exemption, then the authorized contacts as a list (below), custom fields, tags, and when they became a client. Delete client sits quietly at the foot. Fleet accounts set payment terms here (Net 7–60): every invoice sent to any of their vehicles gets a due date stamped from the terms, and the balance ages as a receivable until it's paid. Lead source records how the customer found you (Google, Referral, Drive-by, Website, Social, Repeat, Other, or your own words). The list is the shop's: pick Edit the list at the foot of the menu to add or remove entries in place. It is stored cleanly for Financials; there is no per-visit source to keep up with.
• Activity. Internal notes your customer never sees, then everything that ever happened, grouped by month and filterable by visits, invoices, messages, and reviews.

The phone app shows the same record: the same header, figures and five tabs, with every car, what it has been charged and what it owes, the bills, store credit and the payment history. Edits to contact details, notes, tax exemption, payment terms, preferred channel and text reminders save from either screen. Merging clients, bulk edits, custom fields and restoring a removed car stay on the web.

Business customers

A client is a Person or a Business; pick on the New Client form or on the Profile tab. A business is one record for the whole company: the company name is what the list shows, the Account ID is the number the customer uses for the account (their fleet number, searchable), and the people who speak for it are authorized contacts. They read as a list on the Profile tab: each person's name, role, phone and email, and under them what they may do in words (Approves work · Gets quotes and invoices, one of the two, or Contact only). Add a contact opens one small editor (name, role, phone, email, then two switches, Can approve work and Gets quotes and invoices, each with a line that says what it means); Edit on a row opens the same editor in its place, with Remove at the left. The account's own phone and email in the header are the primary contact and are not a row; with no extra contacts the list says so.

Those switches drive the rest of the product. When you send a quote or an invoice for one of the account's vehicles, the send sheet offers the contacts as the recipient (the first contact set to receive documents is the default; the account's own number and email stay available). When you record an in-person or phone approval, the dialog lets you pick which contact gave the OK, and that name goes on the consent record. The visit contact at check-in (the driver dropping the car off) is unchanged.

Credit limit and store credit

Both live on the client's Balances tab, under the bills. Money viewers see them; admins set them. Overview repeats the standing in one sentence.

Credit limit. A dollar limit on what the account may owe across its open bills (sent, partially paid and the running bill of work in progress). When approving new work would push the account past it, the Record approval dialog says so in plain words before you confirm, and check-in shows the same standing when you pick the customer. By default the limit only warns. Turn on Block new work over the limit and the approval is refused unless an admin types a reason; the reason is logged on the account. Every change to the limit is logged too.

Store credit. A per-customer balance you give with a reason (Add credit, for goodwill, a comeback, an overcharge) and spend by applying it to one of the customer's open invoices (Apply to an invoice: pick the bill, the amount defaults to as much as the balance allows). Applying credit records a real payment with the method Store credit on that invoice, so the receipt, the payment history and the books all show it; credit pays a balance and never changes an invoice total. The invoice's own Record payment panel offers the same credit at the counter (Store credit · $X available, Use it), splitting the collection between the credit and the method you pick. A store-credit payment is refunded as store credit from the invoice's Record refund (the Store credit leg; a cash leg on that bill stops at the money paid that way). The ledger under the balance lists every addition and every application, naming the bill ("Applied to INV-3124", "Refunded from INV-3124") as a link that opens that invoice.

Export, bulk edit and merge

Select (beside Sort) turns the list into a checklist. With rows ticked, Export CSV downloads the selection; with nothing ticked it downloads everything the current search, filter and location scope show. Edit changes only what you fill in across the selection: add tags, remove tags, set the lead source, set the type. Merge (admins, exactly two rows) joins duplicate records: pick the one to keep, read exactly what moves (vehicles, visits, texts, appointments, store credit, contacts), type merge, confirm. Everything on the other record moves to the kept one, blank fields fill from it, tags and notes combine, and its old name, phone and email stay on the kept record as a former identity so search still finds it. A merge cannot be undone; one log row records it.

Tax-exempt customers

Dealers, resellers, and fleet accounts that shouldn't be charged sales tax get a Tax exempt toggle on the client. Turn it on and enter their resale or exemption certificate number. From then on every quote and invoice built for that customer carries no sales tax, and the customer document shows a clear "Tax exempt" line with the certificate number in place of a tax amount, so the exemption is on the record, never a silent gap.

Exemption covers sales tax only. Shop supplies and the environmental fee are still charged. The status shows as a small "Tax exempt" chip on the customer card while you build a quote, so it's never a surprise at the counter.

A bill that is still open follows the toggle. Turn the exemption on mid-visit and the next rebuild of the bill drops its sales tax to zero while keeping the shop's rate on record; turn it off again and the same rate taxes the bill again. Every later change to that bill (a charge, a discount, supplies, the environmental fee) computes tax the same way. A bill that has already been paid in full is never re-taxed.

Where clients come from

• The AI receptionist creates or matches clients by phone number.
• Website bookings and check-ins do the same.
• Repeat customers match automatically, so their history stays on one record. A number is matched by its digits whatever shape it was typed in, and a new client typed at the counter with a number already on file lands on that customer when the first name matches; a different first name on a shared number is a new person. Numbers are stored in one shape (+1 and ten digits for US numbers), and searching the list by any part of a number finds it.