Customers
Manage your customer database and relationships
Customers in SettleWise are the people or businesses you invoice. Each customer profile tracks contact information, invoice history, payment history, credit balance, and transfer history.
Customer Balance
The customer balance is the single most important number on a customer profile. It shows three values:
| Value | What it means |
|---|---|
| Available credits | Sum of unused credits (from overpayments, rollovers, transferred credit, or credit memos) |
| Outstanding debt | Sum of unpaid invoice amounts (remaining balance across all open invoices) |
| Net balance | Credits minus debt. Positive = customer has credit you owe them. Negative = customer owes you. |
This balance is calculated in real-time from the customer's invoices and credits — it's not a manually maintained number.
Customer Profile
Each customer profile contains:
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Contact information | Name, email, phone, address, tax ID |
| Invoices | All invoices for this customer with statuses |
| Payments | All payments received from this customer |
| Credits | Available credits, applied credits, credit history |
| Credit Transfers | Incoming and outgoing credit transfers between customers |
| Timeline | Activity log — invoice created, payment received, credit applied, etc. |
Creating Customers
Manual creation
- Navigate to Customers → New Customer
- Enter name (required) and email (required for sending invoices)
- Add phone, address, and other details as needed
- Save
Automatic creation
Customers are also created automatically when:
- You create an invoice and enter a new customer name
- A customer syncs from QuickBooks (bi-directional sync — customers created in either system appear in both)
- The AI assistant creates an invoice for a customer that doesn't exist yet
Customer Sources
| Source | Meaning |
|---|---|
| settlewise | Created directly in SettleWise |
| quickbooks | Imported from QuickBooks Online |
The source is tracked for reference but doesn't affect functionality. Customers from both sources work identically.
Billing Customers and Commission Partners
SettleWise now separates billing customers from commission partners:
- A customer is the billed entity. Customers own invoices, balances, payments, and credits.
- A commission partner is an intermediary such as an agency, group former, or referral source.
- A customer can be linked to a partner without changing who is billed.
- The invoice email can go to the customer or the assigned partner.
This keeps the billing customer list clean while still supporting commission workflows.
Real Hierarchy
Use customer hierarchy only when your organization truly has a parent-child billing structure.
- hierarchy is optional and only shown when real parent-child data exists
- hierarchy is for billing structure or QuickBooks compatibility
- agencies and group formers should usually be modeled as commission partners, not parent customers
Relationship and Commission Setup
| Scenario | Where to configure it | What to set | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard billed customer | Customer record | No partner or hierarchy | Normal billed customer. |
| Customer with an intermediary | Customer record | Select a Commission partner, review the Commission rate, and choose Send invoice email to | The customer stays billed, the partner earns commission, and the invoice email can go to either party. |
| Agency / group former / referral setup | Partner record | Choose the partner category on the partner | The category controls defaults for future links and settlement behavior. |
| Real parent-child billing | Customer record | Use hierarchy only when the child truly belongs under another billing customer | Preserves a real billing structure and optional parent delivery when needed. |
The important rules are:
- use commission partners for agencies, group formers, and referrals
- keep partner category on the partner, not on the customer
- keep commission rate on the customer-partner link
- treat invoice delivery separately from who is legally billed
QuickBooks Sync
Customer sync with QuickBooks is bi-directional:
| Direction | What happens |
|---|---|
| SettleWise → QuickBooks | When you create a customer in SettleWise, it's created in QB automatically (during invoice sync) |
| QuickBooks → SettleWise | Customers created in QB appear in SettleWise |
Matching logic:
- First, match by email address
- If no email match, match by name
- If no match found, create a new customer
If you have existing customers in QuickBooks, they'll be matched automatically when you create invoices in SettleWise. No manual import needed.
Some commission-partner relationships may still sync to QuickBooks as parent-style records when needed, but SettleWise keeps partners separate from billing customers inside the app.
Credit Operations
From a customer profile, you can:
- View available credits — see all unused credits and their sources
- Apply credits to invoices — use the AI assistant or create a credit-only payment
- Transfer credits — move available credit from this customer to another from the Balance card
- Review transfer history — see incoming and outgoing transfers in the Credit Transfers section
- Issue refunds — process a refund for a paid invoice (via AI assistant)
See Credits & Credit Memos for details on how credits work. If you need to move an unpaid invoice balance instead of existing credit, use Transfer Balance.
Best Practices
- Always include email — required for sending invoices and payment receipts
- Use consistent names — "John Smith" and "J. Smith" create two different customers
- Check for duplicates — before creating a customer, search to make sure they don't already exist (especially after QB sync)
- Review balances regularly — customers with large credit balances may need attention (refund or apply to new invoices)