Managing customers

A customer is the buyer record behind your orders and subscriptions. It holds the name, email address and phone number, and it collects everything that person bought from you in one place.

Open the payments overview

From there, go to Payments > Sales > Customers. If Payments is off in your workspace, switch it on under Settings > Features. Seeing customers needs View Payments. Adding, editing or deleting them needs Update Orders / Customers.

How customers are created

You rarely add customers yourself. A customer record is created as soon as a buyer places an order through your checkout, when you create an order by hand, or when you import payments or subscriptions from Stripe.

Each email address belongs to exactly one customer in your workspace. When the same person buys again with the same email, the new order is added to the existing record instead of creating a second one.

The customer list

Each row shows the Name, the Email, the number of Orders and the Created date. The search box finds customers by name or email address. Open a customer with Edit in the row. Export CSV in the three-dot menu downloads every customer that matches the search.

Adding a customer by hand

Use the add button above the list to open New Customer. It has three steps:

1. Contact: first name, last name, email and phone. Name and email are required.
2. Billing Address: optional. Fill it in if you want it on file for invoices.
3. Shipping Address: switch on Different shipping address only if goods go somewhere else than the billing address.

The last step shows a summary. Choose Create, and the new customer opens right away.

If a customer with that email address already exists, no second record is created. The existing customer is kept as it is, and only the addresses you entered are saved onto it.

Inside a customer

The header shows the name, email, phone and Customer since. A Member badge means the customer is linked to a member account in your workspace. This happens when a paid order is processed, because buyers get a member account so they can access what they bought.

The customer page has five tabs.

Overview shows the Lifetime value, three counters and the latest orders.

• Lifetime value adds up what the customer paid on orders that are paid, processing, shipped or delivered, minus everything refunded on them. Test orders and pending orders do not count.
• If the customer paid in more than one currency, only orders in the currency of their most recent paid order are added up. The label then reads Paid orders, shown in :currency with that currency filled in.
• The counters show Orders with how many are paid, Subscriptions with how many are active, and Refunds with the refunded total.
• Recent orders lists the three newest orders. View all jumps to the orders tab.

Orders lists every order of this customer, including test orders, newest first. Click an order to open it, see Viewing and creating orders.

Subscriptions lists the customer's subscriptions with their status and the next renewal date. What you can do with a subscription is explained in Cancelling, pausing and resuming subscriptions.

Refunds lists the credit notes issued on this customer's orders, see Refunds and credit notes.

Details is where you edit the record. Under Contact you can change the Name, Phone, Email and Internal note, then Save. The email address must stay unique in your workspace, so you cannot give a customer an address another customer already uses. The internal note is for your team only and appears on the overview once it is filled in.

Under Addresses you edit the Billing address and the Shipping address. Copy from billing fills in the shipping address for you. New orders you create by hand and their invoices use the billing address. A checkout creates the customer with name and email only; the addresses a buyer enters are kept on the order.

Deleting a customer

Delete removes a customer permanently. It is refused while the customer has an order that was ever paid, an invoice or a subscription. Draft, pending, failed and expired orders, such as abandoned checkouts, do not stand in the way.

Purchases in the member profile

If a customer is also a member, you see their purchases from the member side as well. Open the member and go to the Payments tab, which appears once Payments is switched on.

• Purchases lists the orders placed by this member, newest first, up to the latest 100. Open one to see its items and payments, start a refund, or jump to the full order.
• Below it, the member's subscriptions are listed. You can pause, resume or cancel them there as well.