Customers
Overview
The customer base is the central address for companies and private customers. It is deliberately the core rather than one module among many: documents, work items, contracts and communication all hang off this single master data row.
A customer is either a company or a private person. That distinction is not a label — it governs which fields make sense and how downstream modules such as tax and invoicing treat the record.
Core tasks
Create a customer. New customer opens a form with type, status, industry, name, VAT identification number, website, email, phone, owner, billing address and notes. Only the name is required — everything else can follow later, so that capture never fails over a missing detail. Further required fields are set by the administration (see below); they are marked in the form.
Company or private customer. Choose the type when creating. For a private customer the name is the person ("first and last name"): the system creates them automatically as the main contact — with the customer's email and phone, unless the address already belongs to another contact. The same happens when a customer is later switched to private, on import and when a lead is converted. This person stays the main contact: deleting, deselecting or moving them to another customer is refused until another contact is the main contact.
Be warned about duplicates. Before creating, the system checks whether the customer already exists — with the same rules as the duplicate list: the same VAT ID is a hard duplicate, creation is refused and the existing customer is linked. The same email or the same name with the same domain is a soft match: the dialog names the existing customers, Create anyway creates the new one regardless. Customers of brands you cannot see do not appear in the warning; the hard rule still applies.
Search, filter, group. The list can be filtered by type, status, industry, owner, tag and brand, and grouped by type, status and industry. Columns show name, type, status, industry, email, phone, owner, tags and brand. A filter only narrows: customers of other brands stay invisible with a filter too.
Work on several at once. Rows can be selected and deleted together, provided you hold the delete permission. Deleting asks no question: the customers go to the recycle bin, and Undo brings them back for five seconds. The same applies to Delete on the detail page and to contacts.
Back to the list without starting over. Open a customer from the list and come back with Back (or the browser's back button), and search, filters, sorting, scroll position and the selected rows are as you left them. A fresh visit via the sidebar starts at the top and without a selection.
Use the 360° view. The detail page is organised into tabs:
| Tab | Content |
|---|---|
| Overview | master data, billing, shipping and visiting address, notes, tags, additional fields, key data with owner |
| Communication | the message history for this customer |
| 360° | everything attached, on one timeline |
| Contacts | this customer's contact people |
| Files | every document filed on the customer — upload, preview, download, remove |
| Group | only on a parent company: the aggregated view across all subsidiaries and their subsidiaries |
Installed modules add further tabs — deals, tickets, projects, contracts or invoices, for instance. Which ones appear depends on what is installed and released to you. With the pricing modules, the tab Customer prices shows the customer's agreed price lists and the card Customer groups the customer's groups, see Prices & units.
See the business partner roles. The Roles card on the overview shows what this record is besides a customer — for example supplier or affiliate partner —, each with its own number and state (active/inactive). Clicking a role jumps to its view (supplier or partner detail) if you have its read permission; without it the role stays visible as text. Addresses and contacts are maintained only once, here on the customer.
Use the group view. If a customer has subsidiaries (field Parent Customer (Group) on the subsidiary), the Group tab appears; the Company Hierarchy card leads there directly via Group view. At the top are the totals across the whole group — open deals and pipeline value, deals won in the last twelve months, revenue of the last twelve months (net, in the book currency), open tickets and open tasks —, below every member with its own values, indented by level. Only what you may see is counted: a subsidiary that is not visible to you is left out together with its figures, and every figure follows the read permission of its area in the respective brand — without permission on invoices, revenue is missing entirely instead of showing zero. Which figures exist depends on the installed modules.
File documents on the customer. The Files tab shows the documents assigned to the customer and takes new ones via Upload. It is the same file store as Files in the menu — a file on the customer can be found there too, with versions and download link. The tab is visible with platform.file.view; uploading requires platform.file.upload, removing platform.file.manage — each in the customer's brand.
Maintain three addresses. The edit dialog holds billing, shipping and visiting address side by side, each with an address line 2 (c/o, building, floor). An emptied address is removed.
Set the owner. The owner (account owner) is shown in the key data and chosen in the edit dialog. Only an active user with access to the customer's brand can become owner — otherwise someone would be responsible for a customer they never see.
Assign tags. The Tags card offers the catalogue tags with scope customer (and those without a scope) of the customer's brand. Only users with the permission can create a new tag. The customer list filters by them; automations can assign tags to customers.
Set up email recognition. On the detail page you can register email addresses and whole domains as recognition markers. Incoming mail from those senders is assigned to the customer automatically — which saves the manual filing in day-to-day work and is the lever that keeps the communication history complete by itself.
Fields in detail
The What it does column answers what changes in the system — not what the field is called. The grey name behind the label is the API field: the same thing runs under that name through automation, import and AI tools.
Creating and editing a customer
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Name name | yes | text, max. 255 characters | The only required entry. Appears on every document, in search, list and history. |
Type type | yes | company or private person | Decides the tax treatment and the form of address. For companies elsewhere in the EU it governs whether you can invoice without VAT at all. |
Status statusId | no | master data "customer statuses" | The life state of the customer (prospect, active, dormant …). Filterable and usable as a condition in automations. |
Industry industry | no | text, max. 100 characters | Free classification for reporting and audience building. |
VAT ID vatId | no | country code + number, e.g. DE123456789 | The VAT identification number. On save the shape is checked per country code (EU, XI, CH, GB, NO) and the number is stored without spaces and separators; a tax number without a country code is rejected. Only a new or changed value is checked — migrated legacy data does not block any other change. Only one customer may carry the same number. Only a confirmed check (VIES) turns an EU customer into a business customer without VAT; unconfirmed, the system treats them as a private person. |
VAT rule taxMode | no | empty/standard or exempt (§ 4 UStG) | Exempt: new quotes, orders and invoices for this customer are created without VAT and with the mandatory § 4 UStG notice. Small business (§ 19) belongs to the brand and cannot be chosen here. |
Customer number customerNumber | no | text, max. 50 characters, unique | The customer number. Left empty, the system draws it from the number range on save — also for a customer who had none so far (for example from a migration). Set by hand it bypasses the range; a number already in use is rejected. |
GLN gln | no | 13 digits with a check digit | The customer's global location number (GS1). A VAT ID identifies a taxable person, a GLN a party in the flow of goods: EDI messages are addressed by it. A wrong check digit is rejected on save. |
Our customer number at the partner partnerCustomerNumber | no | text, max. 50 characters | The number they keep us under — the opposite direction of your own customer number. It goes on documents and into EDI messages so they can match them. |
Our supplier number at the partner partnerSupplierNumber | no | text, max. 50 characters | The supplier number this customer keeps us under in their accounts payable. |
Email email | no | email address, max. 255 characters | The general address of the customer. Document dispatch and portal invitations fall back to it when no contact is chosen. |
Phone phone | no | digits, +, spaces, ( ) / . -, max. 50 characters | Central phone number. Letters ("ext.", "please call") are rejected on save — for a new or changed value. |
Website website | no | text, max. 255 characters | The company's address on the web. |
Language defaultLocale | no | one of the configured languages | The language documents and mails to this customer are produced in. Empty means system language. |
Parent customer parentCustomerUlid | no | identifier of a customer | Builds group structures: subsidiary under parent. The record shows related companies; documents stay with the entity that raised them. |
Billing address billingAddress | no | street, postcode, city, country | The address on the document. The country decides the tax case — not the shipping address. |
Shipping address shippingAddress | no | street, postcode, city, country | Where goods go when that is not the billing address. Empty means: identical to the billing address. |
Visiting address visitAddress | no | street, address line 2, postcode, city, country | Where the customer is found on site (reception, meetings) — separate from billing and shipping address. All fields empty removes it. |
Payment terms paymentTermUlid | no | master data "payment terms" | This customer's due date and early-payment discount. Carried onto a new document, where it drives due date and discount deadline. |
E-invoice format eInvoiceFormat | no | XRechnung or ZUGFeRD | Which structured format e-invoices to this customer are produced in (ZUGFeRD = PDF with embedded data). Empty means XRechnung. Can be overridden on the invoice. |
Debtor account debtorAccount | no | digits and letters, max. 20 characters | This customer's personal account in the books. Empty = postings go to the collective debtor account from the DATEV settings. |
Notes notes | no | multi-line text | Free text on the record. It does not replace the communication history. |
Owner ownerId | no | an active user with access to the brand | Who looks after the customer. The basis for the "own only" visibility rule: without an owner a customer belongs to nobody and the rule does not bite. An unknown, inactive or foreign-brand user is rejected; an owner who has since left does not block other changes. |
Tags tags | no | list of tags | Free classification (e.g. key account). Saving replaces the whole list; offered are the catalogue tags with scope customer or without a scope, matching the customer's brand. The basis of the list's tag filter. |
Watchers watcherIds | no | list of users | Who may read the customer without looking after them. An additional read permission next to the owner, not a way around the rules: without platform.customer.read in the brand a watcher sees nothing either. Saving replaces the whole list. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Assigns the customer to a brand. Whoever cannot see the brand will not find the customer in list or search. |
Interface and automation only
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
emailDomains | list of domains | Incoming addresses on these domains are assigned to this customer automatically. This is how mail from an unknown person still lands in the right record. |
externalRefs | label-to-value mapping | Origin in a foreign system — the identifier there. A second import recognises the customer by it instead of creating them again. |
Settings & permissions
platform.customer.readto view,platform.customer.createto create,platform.customer.deleteto delete.
Where a permission is missing, its button is not shown.
- Statuses are master data. Shipped are Prospect, Active, Inactive, Churned, Support
and Maintenance customer. The list can be adjusted in the administration area — statuses are data, not fixed code.
- Additional fields. Custom fields are defined centrally and then appear on the detail page.
- Required fields. Which built-in fields (e.g. VAT ID, industry, owner, visiting address) must be
filled in on save is set by the administration under Settings → Custom fields → Required standard fields, see Custom fields. If such a field is missing, saving is refused and the field is marked. The rule applies to forms, the interface and AI tools — import, lead conversion and automations do not check it, so that a missing detail stops no migration and no mail intake.
- Brand scope. If you work across brands, you see only customers of brands you hold a permission
for. The cut follows the permission, not mere membership.
- Deleting is a hiding. Deleted customers go to the recycle bin and can be restored from there.
FAQ & troubleshooting
**I cannot see New customer.** Then you lack the platform.customer.create permission.
A customer has disappeared. Check the filters first, then the recycle bin. Across several brands, the brand selection can also be the cause.
Incoming mail is not assigned to the customer. Then the matching recognition marker is missing. Register the sender domain or the specific address on the detail page.
"This VAT ID already belongs to a customer". The same VAT ID is a duplicate. Use the linked customer; if it belongs to a brand you cannot see, contact the administration.
I cannot delete the contact of a private customer. The person of a private customer is their main contact. Make another contact the main contact first.
I cannot change position or phone. Those fields belong to the contact, not the customer — they are maintained in the Contacts tab, see Contacts.