This article covers creating a customer, the settings you can change after,
and the contacts on a customer's account. To bring in many customers at
once, see Importing Customers.
Add a customer
Open Customers and click Add Customer (on a phone, the + in the
title bar). The Add New Customer panel opens. It has four parts.
Company Details
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Company Name (required) | The name on invoices, quotes and the customer list. |
| Customer Type (required) | The customer's industry: Construction, Septic, Municipal & Government, Events & Festivals and so on. |
| Account Type | Residential or Commercial. Optional; leave it on Not set if you don't know yet. "Independent of the customer type." |
| Branch | Which yard the customer belongs to. Only shown to companies with more than one branch. |
| Company Email | The account's email. It receives billing, service and sales email unless you switch an audience off. See Email Recipients. |
| Company Phone | The main number. |
| Parent account | File this customer under an umbrella account, such as a contractor over its subdivisions. See Parent Accounts. |
Customer Type and Account Type are two separate facts. A construction
company is Commercial; a homeowner with a septic tank is Residential.
PortaPro never fills in Account Type from the industry, so pick it when you
know it.
Default Site Address
Street Address, City, State and ZIP Code are required. This
address becomes the customer's first site, the place jobs go. The state is
pre-filled from your company's default (see
For a site with no street address (a field, a festival ground), click No
street address? Drop a pin instead., pan the map until the crosshair sits on
the spot, and add an optional Location Note such as "Corner of Elm and
Main, red barn on left". ← Back to street address returns to the address
fields.
Two switches add more addresses when they differ from the site:
Fees and deposits
when deposits are turned on for your company.
Add first contact
Switch on Add first contact to create a contact in the same step:
First Name, Last Name, Contact Type, Title, and either Same
phone & email as company or a separate Contact Email and Contact
Phone.
Click Create Customer. If anything is missing, a list at the bottom of the
panel says what to fix.
Change a customer's details
Open the customer and choose ⋮ → Edit (on a phone, ⋮ → Edit). The
Edit Customer panel has these sections:
Email, Phone, Website and Parent account. A parent account also gets Name
this account on its divisions' invoices, which adds a "A division of …"
name line to each division's invoice (never the parent's address).
Address for a separate one).
Click Save Changes.
The Billing section
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Billing cycle | Use org default, Calendar month, Anniversary / custom cycle, Fixed-day cycle (e.g., every 28 days) or Manual (set per invoice). |
| Billing source | Rate Card, Completed work or Both (rate card base plus overage for extra visits). |
| One invoice per site | Cycle billing creates a separate draft for each site, sent as one email with a page where the customer can pay each one. |
| Bill in advance | Cut each cycle invoice before the period starts instead of after it ends, with an optional Advance lead days for this customer. See Cycle Close & Invoicing. |
| Plain email delivery | Send invoices, receipts, reminders, void notices and statements as plain text with the PDF attached and no logo, buttons or links. Turn it on when a city, school district or large company's mail filter keeps rejecting your invoices (your Gmail gets a "550 High probability of spam" notice). |
| Service completed notice | Company setting, One message per stop, One summary at the end of the day or Don't send. |
| Payment terms | Pre-fills the payment terms on new invoices. Use org default follows your invoice settings. |
| PO number | Printed as "PO #" on the invoice PDF, the remittance stub and the invoice email. Drafts print the current number; a sent invoice keeps the number it went out with. See Customer PO Numbers. |
| Override grace period (days) and Exempt from late fees | Late-fee rules for this customer. |
| Delivery fee override and Waive delivery fees | Same as on the Add panel. |
| Exclude from cash discount | Bill this customer the card price only, with no cash price shown. |
| Tax-exempt | Bills $0 sales tax on new quotes and invoices. Add an Exemption reason, Certificate #, Certificate expires date and the Certificate file. Existing documents don't change. |
| Preferred technician | The driver this customer prefers, or No preference (auto-assign). |
The Rate Card line on the profile tells you whether the customer is
actually billing on a rate card today; the Billing source setting only
says how they would be billed. See
The Customer Hub and the Customer Profile.
Contacts
Contacts are the people at a customer: the person who pays, the site
supervisor, the emergency number. Open the customer, then Contacts →
Contacts.
Add a contact
Click Add Contact. The Add New Contact panel asks for:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| First Name, Last Name (required) | |
| Contact Type (required) | Billing, On-Site, Emergency or Additional. |
| Title | Their job title, such as Site Manager. |
| Email, Phone | A contact needs an email to receive anything. |
| Birthday (optional) | Month and day, for celebration cards. |
| Notes | |
| Primary Contact | One per customer. Marking a new primary unmarks the old one. |
| Receives email | Billing (invoices, statements, receipts, payment reminders), Service (service reports), Sales (quotes). |
Click Add Contact.
The email switches fill themselves in from the contact type, and you can
change them before saving: Billing type turns on Billing and Sales; On-Site
turns on Service; marking someone Primary turns on Billing and Sales. Without
an email address the switches stay off. Full detail, including the grid that
sets every contact at once: Email Recipients.
The contact list
Each row shows the person, their title, a badge for each kind of email they
receive, and a green check on the primary contact. Search contacts...
filters the list. Each row's ⋮ menu has Edit, View Notes (when
there are notes), Make Primary and Delete. Deleting asks you to
confirm and can't be undone.
Contacts brought in by an import can carry a fifth contact type, primary,
which the picker doesn't offer. They work like any other contact.
Portal access and notification preferences
The Contacts tab has two more views:
messages this customer receives (service reminders, invoice nudges, job
status, supply updates, the "driver is about 20 minutes out" text) and the
customer's quiet hours, when texts are held back.
Do Not Contact
Quick Actions → Do Not Contact… sets what you may send this customer:
Do not email (marketing), Do not text, Do not call. The profile
then shows a Do Not Contact badge and portal invitations pause. Marketing
email is the only email it stops; invoices and receipts still go out.
Inactive, deleted and merged customers
billing and reminders, keeping every invoice and job. A reason is required.
30-day trash, and is refused for any customer with invoices or payments.
All three are explained in
Inactive, Deleted and Merged Customers.