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, and credit balance.
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, 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 |
| 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.
Parent-Child Relationships
SettleWise supports parent-child customer relationships for agencies, companies, or families:
- A parent customer can have multiple sub-clients
- Option to route billing to the parent — invoices are sent to the parent's email instead of the sub-client's
- The Financial Advisor agent can look up sub-clients and their details
This is useful when an agency books on behalf of individual clients, or a company pays for its employees.
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.
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 credit from this customer to another (via AI assistant)
- Issue refunds — process a refund for a paid invoice (via AI assistant)
See Credits & Credit Memos for details on how credits work.
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)