Creating a Customer
The customer record sets the defaults for every invoice, controls credit policy, and anchors the AR sub-ledger. Get it right once — everything downstream inherits it.
Navigate to: Sales → Customers → New Customer
The customer form has four sections: General Information, Contact Information, Products/Services, and Additional Notes. Only the name is required — but filling the rest in correctly pays dividends across every invoice, statement, and report that references this customer.
Full Fields Reference
| Field | Required | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Name | Yes | Full legal or trading name. Used on invoices, ledger entries, and statements. This is the searchable identifier across the entire sales module. |
| Display Name | No | A shorter name shown in lists and dropdowns when the full name is long. If blank, the Customer Name is used everywhere. |
| Customer Type | No | Business or Individual. |
| Customer Category | No | A classification for filtering and segmentation. Categories are defined from the Customers page (New category). |
| Business Units / Locations | No | Assigns the customer to one or more centers. Shown only when the business has centers. Used for center-based AR filtering and reporting. |
| Custom Label | No | What you call this kind of party — Client, Student, Partner. Display only. |
| Website | No | Reference only — not used in any automated workflow. |
| General Email | No | Fallback email for sending invoices and statements when no contact person is set. |
| General Phone | No | Main contact number when a specific contact person is unavailable. Include the country code. |
| Street Address, City, State / Province, Country | No | The billing address. Printed on invoices. |
| Payment Terms | No | 30 days (default), Due on receipt, 15 days, 45 days, 60 days, 90 days. Applied to every new invoice for this customer; overridable per invoice. |
| Credit Limit | No | Maximum AR balance for this customer. Advisory — the customer page shows Credit available, or Over credit limit by, and an alert when the balance exceeds the limit. Invoices are never blocked. |
| Tax ID / VAT Number | No | VAT registration number, EIN, GST number, or local tax identifier. Printed on invoices in jurisdictions that require it. |
| Contact Information | No | One or more contact people — Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Email, Phone Number — with one marked Primary. |
| Products/Services | No | Reference notes about what this customer buys — name, category, description, price, unit. Not linked to the item catalogue. |
| Notes | No | Internal comments visible only to your team. Not printed on any customer-facing document. |
A balance the customer already owed when you moved to Trabalance is recorded as an Opening Balance document (Sales → Opening receivables), dated to your migration date. It posts to Accounts Receivable and is the first thing a receipt settles. Do not create one for a customer with no prior history.
Setting Financial Defaults Well
The Payment Terms field on the customer record is the most impactful default. Every invoice inherits it automatically: set 30 days on the customer record and every new invoice starts with a due date 30 days from its date. The invoice currency is chosen on the invoice itself (Change Currency in the items table).
Getting this right at the customer level eliminates repetitive data entry across hundreds of invoices.
Credit Limit Strategy
| Customer Type | Suggested Credit Limit Approach |
|---|---|
| New customer, no history | Set a conservative limit (e.g. USD 5,000). Increase after 90 days of clean payment history. |
| Established customer, pays on time | Set the limit to 2–3x their typical monthly billing. Provides breathing room without unlimited exposure. |
| Customer with payment history issues | Set the limit to match their current outstanding balance. The customer page will show Over credit limit by as soon as anything new is invoiced. |
| Internal or intercompany customer | Leave blank — credit limits are not meaningful for internal billing. |
After Creating the Customer
Once saved, the customer record is immediately available across:
- Invoice creation (Customer dropdown)
- Receipt creation (Customer dropdown)
- Customer statements
- The Receivables Aging report
- Center-based financial filtering
The customer page becomes the hub for their full transaction history — see Customer Detail and Aging for what it contains. Account managers and sales reps appear there under Account team.
Related
- The page this record powers: Customer detail and aging.
- Credit limits and giving the customer portal access: Credit limits and portal.
- What they already owed you before Trabalance: Customer opening balances.
- Managing the list, merging duplicates and archiving: Customer management.