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, billing address and notes. Only the name is required — everything else can follow later, so that capture never fails over a missing detail.
Search, filter, group. The list can be filtered by type, status and industry, and grouped by the same attributes. Columns show name, type, status, industry, email and phone.
Work on several at once. Rows can be selected and deleted together, provided you hold the delete permission.
Use the 360° view. The detail page is organised into tabs:
| Tab | Content |
|---|---|
| Overview | master data, billing and shipping address, notes, additional fields |
| Communication | the message history for this customer |
| 360° | everything attached, on one timeline |
| Contacts | this customer's contact people |
Installed modules add further tabs — deals, tickets, projects or contracts, for instance. Which ones appear depends on what is installed and released to you.
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 | text, max. 100 characters | The VAT identification number. Only a confirmed check turns an EU customer into a business customer without VAT; unconfirmed, the system treats them as a private person. |
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 | text, max. 50 characters | Central phone number. |
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. |
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 invoices to this customer are produced in. Empty means a plain PDF without embedded data. |
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 | a user | 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. |
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 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 |
|---|---|---|
customerNumber | text, max. 50 characters | The customer number. It is drawn from the number range on creation; set by hand this bypasses the range and can duplicate numbers. |
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
customer.readto view,customer.createto create,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.
- 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 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.
I cannot change position or phone. Those fields belong to the contact, not the customer — they are maintained in the Contacts tab, see Contacts.