Clients settings

Most of what you choose from a dropdown on a client comes from a list under Settings → Modules → Clients. There are six lists and one default.

The Modules section expanded: Clients, Work, Invoice & Accounts, Inventory, Quotes, Contract, Expenses, Equipment, Purchase Order, Request and User

Settings → Modules

The Clients settings page with cards for Clients Default Settings, Client Type, Industry Type and Reference

Settings → Modules → Clients

Every list works the same way: open it, press its Add button, type the value, Save. The pencil on a row edits it and the bin deletes it. New entries are offered on the client form straight away.

Default settings

Clients Default Settings: a single Save for future use tick box

Settings → Modules → Clients → Clients Default Settings

One tick box, Save for future use, and it decides how the same tick box arrives on the forms where you can type a client in without leaving what you are doing — adding a request, or a job for somebody who is not on your books yet.

Ticked here, that person is kept as a client when the record is saved. Cleared, their details stay attached to the one record and no client is created. Tick it if most of the people who come to you are worth keeping; clear it if you deal with a lot of one-off callers.

Update saves.

Client Type

The Client Type list showing Commercial and Test Account, with Add Client Type

Settings → Modules → Clients → Client Type

What kind of customer this is — Commercial, Domestic, Contract, Warranty. Client type is the split you report and filter on, so keep it to the handful of categories your pricing or process actually treats differently.

Also creatable from the client form itself, through Add Client type.

Industry Type

The Industry Type list showing Office, Retail and Warehousing

Settings → Modules → Clients → Industry Type

What the client’s business does — Office, Retail, Warehousing, Hospitality. Where client type is about your relationship with them, industry is about them.

Reference

The Reference list: Advertisement, Events, Existing Customer, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Local Newspaper, Magazine, Media and Other

Settings → Modules → Clients → Reference

How they heard about you. This is the longest list as it ships — the usual advertising channels, word of mouth and Other — and it is the one to prune first, because a marketing answer is only useful if the person filling it in can find their option quickly.

Reference appears on the client form and on a request, which is where it usually gets filled in: the enquiry arrives before the client exists.

Contact Tag

The Contact Tag list, empty, with an Add Tag button

Settings → Modules → Clients → Contact Tag

Labels for the individual people at a client — Accounts, Site manager, Out of hours. A client has one or more contacts, and a tag says what a given contact is for, so the right person is emailed about the right thing.

Ships empty.

Payment Term

The Payment Term list showing 7 Days, 15 Days and 30 Days

Settings → Modules → Clients → Payment Term

How long this client gets to pay. Setting a term on a client is what makes the due date on their invoices fill itself in.

Ships with 7, 15 and 30 days. Add whatever else you trade on.

Property Type

The Add Property Type dialog with a single Property Type field and Save

Settings → Modules → Clients → Property Type → Add Property Type

What kind of building you are going to — Flat, Detached house, Office block, Factory unit. It describes the site rather than the customer, and it is worth filling in when the building type changes how a job is priced or how long it takes.