Customers and contacts

A customer is a private organization record. It can represent a person or business and bring together contacts, equipment, orders, and reports without requiring the customer to have a ReportArea account.

Availability: Professional and Company; requires owner, administrator, or Manage commercial operations. Level: Basic.

Purpose

Use Customers to keep a consistent commercial identity, communication details, billing address, and contact people. The selected language guides communications that support Spanish or English.

Requirements

• Active membership, verified email, and commercial permission.
• Select Person or Business, a display name, and language.
• The record must be active for new operations.

Step by step

1. Open Customers and create a record.
2. Choose Person or Business, enter the display name, and select Spanish or English.
3. Optionally add legal name, tax identifier, email, phone, billing address, and internal notes.
4. From the detail, add contacts with name, position, email, phone, and language.
5. Mark one contact as primary and, where appropriate, as a recipient of updates.
6. Review related orders and equipment from the customer record.

Rules and effects

• Only one contact can be primary at a time; selecting a new one clears the previous primary.
• Emails are normalized, but ReportArea does not automatically merge duplicate customers.
• Customers are deactivated rather than deleted, preserving history.
• A business promoted to a Related company keeps its contacts, equipment, orders, and reports. Activation or suspension is then managed from that special record.
• Only related companies with Client or Both role appear as commercial customers.
• Notes are internal and are never published automatically.

Required and optional information

Required for a customer: type, display name, and language. Required for a contact: name. Optional: legal name, tax identifier, channels, address, notes, contacts, position, primary contact, and update-recipient flag.

Practical example

A workshop creates “North Transport” as a Business, selects English, and records Jane as the primary contact who receives updates. Future orders are grouped under the same record, and supported communications can prefer English.

Current limits

• There is no global directory or automatic deduplication by name, email, or tax identifier.
• Receives updates does not by itself publish internal messages or private information.
• Customers are not normally deleted; they are deactivated.
• A record linked as a Related company follows additional rules and cannot be activated from Customers.