Creating a Customer

Customers are the core of your business in TimberCloud. Each customer profile stores contact information, billing and shipping addresses, pricing preferences, and order history. This guide walks you through creating a single customer and importing many customers at once from a CSV file.

Tip: This page covers the admin-side customer record (the CRM profile you manage in the dashboard). It is different from the storefront customer portal — what end-customers see when they log in to your storefront. See What customers see in their portal for that.

Navigate to Customers

From your dashboard, click Customers in the main navigation menu to open the customer list. From here you can see your customer KPI cards (Total Customers, New in last 30 days, Business, Individual), search by name, email, or city, filter by customer type, and add new customers. For more on working with the list and a customer's profile after it exists, see Managing customers.

Create a New Customer

1. On the Customers page, click New Customer in the top-right corner.
2. Fill in the customer's information. Required fields are marked with an asterisk (*).
3. Click Save to create the customer profile.

After saving, you'll land on the new customer's profile, where you can create orders, add contacts, and attach notes.

Customer Fields Reference

Customer Type

Every customer has a Customer Type, stored on the record as customer_type:

• Individual – A personal customer account for a consumer.
• Business – An organization or company account.

This setting drives the Business / Individual filter on the Customers list and the matching KPI cards, and it affects how labels display throughout the system (for example, "Customer Name" vs. "Company Name"). New customers created in the dashboard default to Business.

General Information

Financial Settings

Shipping Settings

Product Display Settings

Control which products this customer can see and purchase:

Tip: Use exclusive products for custom or special-order items that should only be available to specific customers.

Partial Payments

Enable the Partial Payments toggle to allow this customer to make partial payments on their orders. When enabled:

• Customers can pay any amount toward their order balance.
• The remaining balance is tracked automatically.
• Multiple payments can be applied to a single order.

Note: This setting only appears if partial payments are not already enabled company-wide.

Billing Address

The billing address is used for invoices and payment processing.

Shipping Address

The shipping address is used for order deliveries and shipping rate calculations.

Note: If the shipping address fields are left blank, orders default to using the billing address for shipping.

Importing Customers from CSV

Rather than adding customers one at a time, you can bulk-import an existing customer list from a CSV file — ideal when you're onboarding onto TimberCloud or migrating from another system.

Steps to Import

1. On the Customers page, click Import CSV in the top-right corner. The Upload CSV File window opens.
2. Click Choose File and select your .csv file.
3. TimberCloud reads your file's header row and shows a set of mapping dropdowns. For each TimberCloud field, choose the matching column from your CSV. Fields are grouped into Basic Fields, Billing Information, and Shipping Information.
4. Map at least the required fields — Name and Email — then map any others you want to bring in.
5. Click Upload to start the import.
6. When the import finishes, you'll see a summary with Show Successful Uploads and Show Failed Uploads lists so you can review exactly which rows imported and why any were skipped.

Fields you can map

• Basic Fields: Name (required), Email (required), Phone, Mobile, Fax, Discount, Website, Sales Reps, Payment Terms, Customer Type.
• Billing Information: Full Name, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP, Country.
• Shipping Information: Full Name, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, ZIP, Country.

Any field you don't map is simply left empty (or filled from your company defaults — for example, a missing Country falls back to your company's billing country). For Customer Type, use the values business or individual in your spreadsheet.

CSV Format Tips

• Include a header row with clear column names — those headers are what you'll match in the mapping step.
• A valid email is required on every row. Rows with a missing or invalid email are skipped (an email is needed to set up the customer's payment record), and skipped rows are listed in the results so you can fix and re-import them.
• Customer Name must be present on each row, and names must be unique.
• Use consistent formatting for phone numbers and addresses.
• Leave optional columns blank if they don't apply.

Note: Large lists are processed in batches, so an import can take a few minutes — keep the window open until it finishes. A progress bar shows how many records have been processed. If your shop accepts payments, each customer's payment (Stripe) record may continue setting up in the background after the upload reports success.

Customer Approval Workflow

When customers register through your storefront, they may need approval before they can place orders:

1. Registration – The customer creates an account on your storefront.
2. Profile Completion – The customer fills out the required profile information.
3. Approval – An admin reviews and approves the customer (when approval is required).
4. Active – The customer can now place orders.

Configure whether new storefront customers require approval in Settings → Orders → Storefront.

Next Steps

After creating a customer, you can:

• Manage their profile and view order history
• Understand what customers see in their portal
• Create orders linked to this customer — see Creating an order
• Add contacts for multiple points of contact
• Attach notes and files to the customer record