How customers connect

Customers exist to be attached to receipts and reported on. This page describes those links, and what happens when the module is not licensed.

Receipts

Customers licensed	Customers not licensed
The Customer box on New Receipt searches your customers by name, phone or email (up to eight matches) and attaches the one you tap.	The Customer box is a plain, optional name field. Whatever you type prints.
A typed name with no match prints as typed, and with `Customers.Create` the "Create as New Customer" checkbox files it as a record too.	Nothing is stored beyond the receipt.
The receipt stores the customer's name and a link to the record. The link works both ways: an arrow beside the Customer on the receipt screen opens the customer, and the customer page's Related Records card lists their receipts.	The receipt stores the name only.
Sales by Customer is available.	The two customer reports are not offered.

Snapshot rule. The receipt keeps the name as it read at issue. Renaming or deleting the customer never changes an issued receipt.
Permissions. Searching from the receipt needs only Receipts.Create, so a cashier can attach a customer without being able to open the Customers module. Creating needs Customers.Create. Following the arrow from a receipt to the customer needs Customers.View (it is simply absent otherwise), and the Related Records list on the customer page needs Receipts.View.
Offline. The search runs over the customers cached on the device. A customer deleted meanwhile is accepted with a note when the receipt syncs; the printed name is kept.
Unknown customers. A receipt with no customer at all shows a dash in the Receipts list and prints no Customer line. A receipt with a typed name but no attached record shows and prints the typed name, but groups under "Unknown Customer" in Sales by Customer.

Reporting

Customer Directory: every customer with contact details, tax ID, address and the date they were added.
Sales by Customer: receipts, spend, average receipt and last purchase per customer for a period.

Both need Reports.View and the plain Customers.View; a person with only Customers.View.Own is offered neither, because an organisation total that silently omits other people's customers would look complete.

Dashboard

The Customers card shows the three customers first in alphabetical order, with email or phone. See The dashboard.

Permissions and "mine"

"Mine" means the customers this person created, including ones filed from a receipt. A person with Customers.View.Own sees only those in the list, and another person's customer opens as "Customer Not Found" rather than as forbidden. Holding both the plain and the "mine" permission means all. See Roles.

Audit

Creating, editing and deleting a customer is written to the organisation's audit log with the customer's name.