The Customer Centre is the list of everyone you sell to. Each row shows how to reach the customer, their credit limit, what they owe you right now and how much more they can buy on account. From here you add customers, change their details, copy an account, merge two records that are really the same customer, and open any customer's ledger to see every invoice, payment and credit behind their balance.
Use it whenever the question is about a person or a company rather than a single document: "What does this customer owe?", "What is their phone number?", "Are they over their limit?", "Show me everything we have sold them this year."
Opening the Customer Centre
- Customers ▸ Customer Centre on the menu bar.
- Home ▸ Customer Centre (the button at the start of the Customers band on the Home Page).
- Ctrl+J skips the list and goes straight to one customer's ledger: SeroBooks asks which customer (it suggests the customer on the invoice you are writing, if there is one) and opens their ledger in a window. See A customer's ledger and balance.
The tab is called Customer Centre; the heading on the page reads Customers, followed by how many are listed ("1,284 on file"). Inactive customers are not listed until you ask for them (see Show inactive below).
The toolbar
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Search name, company, phone or email… | Narrows the list as you type. It matches the customer's name, company name, first name, last name, mobile number and email address. Every word you type must match. |
| Show inactive | Shown when any customer is inactive, with how many. Click it to list the inactive customers too — each reads Inactive under its name — and again to hide them. |
| Refresh | Reads every customer from the cloud again — adding anyone missing from this computer and taking off anyone deleted in the cloud — then reloads the list and fetches every balance again. Reads Refreshing… while it works. |
| Merge… | Opens the merge tool for two records that are the same customer. Shown only if your role may merge customers. See Merging two customers. |
| Reports | A menu of the customer reports QuickBooks Desktop keeps in its Customer Center: Customer Balance Summary, Customer Balance Detail, A/R Aging Summary, A/R Aging Detail, Open Invoices, Collections Report and Transaction List by Customer. Choosing one opens that report. |
| New customer | Opens the New Customer form. See Add or edit a customer. |
The list
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Name | The name printed on the customer's invoices, in bold. When a customer has both a person's name and a company name, the other one is shown underneath in grey. If the customer belongs to a price level (customer group), its name appears under that in blue. |
| Phone | The customer's mobile number, or —. |
| The customer's email address, or —. | |
| City | City and province (or state), or —. |
| Credit limit | The most this customer may owe you, or — when no limit is set. |
| Balance | What the customer owes you on unpaid invoices right now, fetched live from the server. Shown in red when they owe you something. While balances load you may see …; if one could not be loaded the cell shows check — click it to fetch that customer's balance. |
| Available | Credit limit minus balance: how much more the customer can buy on account. Green while there is room, red when the customer is over the limit (the figure is then negative). — when the customer has no credit limit. |
| (actions) | Two icons: Duplicate (a new account copied from this one) and Edit details. The arrow at the end means the row opens. |
The footer reminds you that Balance = unpaid invoices. Names, phone numbers and addresses are kept on your computer so the list opens instantly and searches fast; balances always come live from the server, so they are right even if another user has just taken a payment.
Opening a customer
Double-click a row, or move to it with the arrow keys and press Enter, to open that customer's ledger: every invoice, payment, credit memo and journal entry with a running balance, and the buttons to edit, copy, delete, see the customer's jobs, custom fields and statement. See A customer's ledger and balance.
Sorting, filtering and exporting
The list works like every list in SeroBooks:
- Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse the order. Sorting by Balance puts the customers who owe the most at the top.
- When the list is long, the table bar above it has its own Search this list… box. Press Enter in it to pin what you typed as a filter, so you can narrow again with a second word and remove either one on its own.
- Filters builds conditions on a column (for example, customers in one city) and can save the view under a name. Columns chooses which columns show; right-clicking a heading does the same.
- Email sends the list as it stands, and Export saves it as CSV, Excel or PDF.
- Drag the edge of a column heading to widen it; Reset widths puts every column back.
Everyday tasks
Add a customer
- Click New customer.
- Fill in the form. Only the name and the province (or state) are required.
- Click Create & select.
The new customer appears in the list straight away. Full details: Add or edit a customer.
Change a customer's details
- Find the customer (type part of the name, phone or email in the search box).
- Click the pencil (Edit details) at the end of the row, or open the ledger and click Edit.
- Change what you need and click Save changes.
Changes to the address, province, price level or terms apply to invoices you write from now on. Invoices already saved keep what they were saved with.
Copy a customer (Duplicate)
Use Duplicate for a branch, a sister company or a second account that differs from an existing one in only a few fields.
- Click the copy icon (Duplicate — a new account copied from this one) on the row, or Duplicate in the customer's ledger.
- A New Customer (copy of …) form opens with the original's address, province, terms, currency, price level, tax status and people already filled in.
- Change what differs (at least the name) and save.
The original customer is not changed. Because the copy usually still matches the original's phone or email, SeroBooks will warn that the contact may already exist; choose Create anyway if you really mean a second account.
Make a customer inactive
Edit the customer and tick Customer is inactive at the bottom left of the form, then Save changes. They leave this list and the customer search on sales forms, and keep all their history. To make them active again, click Show inactive, edit them and untick it. See Add or edit a customer.
Delete a customer
Open the customer's ledger and click Delete. A customer can be deleted only when no invoice, bill, payment, journal entry or other entry uses them; otherwise SeroBooks shows Cannot delete with the reason. If a customer was entered twice by mistake, merge the two records instead.
Merging two customers
When the same customer has been entered twice ("A. Singh" and "Amar Singh", or a company entered once by its trading name and once by its legal name), merge them so their history, balance and statements come together.
- Click Merge… on the toolbar.
- In Which two records are the same contact?, type in Search… to find them and tick the two records. The dialog tells you where you are: Tick two., One picked — tick the duplicate., Two picked. Click Next.
- In Merge two contacts, pick the one to KEEP. The other is marked RETIRE. The name of the one you keep is what appears on every future document.
- SeroBooks shows what will move from the retired record, counted by kind of document (invoices, payments and so on). If the retired record has no documents, it says so and simply retires it. If the server cannot merge these two, the reason appears in red and the Merge button stays unavailable.
- Click Merge, then confirm Merge and keep "…"?.
Everything recorded against the retired customer then belongs to the one you kept. This cannot be undone from the app, so check the pair before you confirm.
Permissions
| Action | What the role needs |
|---|---|
| See the Customer Centre | Access to Customers |
| New customer, Duplicate | Create on Customers |
| Edit details | Edit on Customers |
| Delete (in the ledger) | Delete on Customers |
| Merge… | Merge on Customers (or on Vendors) |
When a role lacks a right, SeroBooks tells you when you click the button rather than hiding it. See Permissions: "you do not have access".
Tips
- Sort by Available to find customers who are over their credit limit (red, negative figures at the top when sorted ascending).
- The Reports button is the quickest way to an aging report for all customers; for one customer, use their ledger or Statement.
- A customer's price level shows under their name in blue, so you can see at a glance who buys at trade prices.
Common problems
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| A customer another user added today is not in the list. | Click Refresh. Names are kept on this computer; Refresh reads them all from the cloud again. |
| A customer who is on other computers cannot be found on this one, or the number on file is lower than on another computer. | Click Refresh. It downloads the whole customer list again and adds anyone missing. If a thin amber line says Still downloading customers & vendors, this computer is still fetching the list in the background; it fills in as it arrives. See Where your data lives. |
| A balance shows check instead of a figure. | The balance could not be fetched when the list opened (usually a brief connection problem). Click check to fetch it, or Refresh for all of them. |
| Available is — for a customer. | The customer has no credit limit. Set one on the customer's form if you want SeroBooks to track it. |
| The balance here differs from the ledger. | The list counts unpaid invoices; the ledger counts every invoice, payment, credit and journal entry. Open the ledger to see which credits make the difference. |
| Cannot delete when deleting a customer. | The customer has documents. Keep them, or merge the customer into the record you want to keep. |