Creating a Customer
Customers are the heart of your business in TimberCloud. Each customer profile stores contact details, billing and shipping addresses, pricing preferences, and a full order history. This guide walks you through creating one customer at a time and bulk-importing many at once from a spreadsheet.
Availability: Customers are available on every plan, including Free.
Tip: This page covers the admin-side customer record (the CRM profile you manage in your dashboard). It is different from the storefront customer portal — what shoppers see when they log in to your storefront. See The Customer Portal for that.
Navigate to Customers
From your dashboard, click Customers in the left sidebar to open the customer list. From here you can see your KPI cards (Total Customers, New in the last 30 days, Business, Individual), search by name, email, or city, filter by customer type, switch between Active and Archived records, and add new customers. For everything you can do with a customer once it exists, see Managing Customers.
Create a New Customer
- On the Customers page, click New Customer in the top-right corner.
- Choose the customer type, then fill in the customer's information.
- Click Save to create the profile.
After saving, you land on the new customer's profile, where you can start orders, add contacts, and attach notes.
Note: Only the customer's name and a billing address are truly required. Everything else — including email — is optional, so you can save a walk-in or phone customer with just a name and address and fill in the rest later.
Customer Type
Every customer is either an Individual or a Business. Pick one at the top of the form:
- Individual — a personal customer account for a consumer.
- Business / Company — an organization or company account.
New customers you create in the dashboard default to Business. The type drives the Business / Individual filter and KPI cards on the Customers list, and it changes labels throughout the app (for example, the name field reads "Company Name" for a business and "Customer Name" for an individual).
General Information
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Company / Customer Name | Yes | The display name for this customer. Must be unique across your account. |
| No | Primary email for communications, invoices, and (when payments are enabled) the customer's Stripe record. Optional — see the note below. | |
| Phone | No | Main phone number. |
| Mobile | No | Mobile / cell number. |
| Fax | No | Fax number, if applicable. |
| Website | No | The customer's website address. |
Note: Email is optional. A customer saved without an email works normally — you just can't send them payment links or Stripe receipts, because those are emailed. Their profile shows a small banner reminding you of this, with a shortcut to add an email later. This makes it easy to record walk-in and phone-order customers on the spot.
Financial Settings
These defaults pre-fill onto every order you create for this customer, so setting them once here saves you re-entering them every time.
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Discount (%) | No | A default discount percentage automatically applied to this customer's orders. Enter 10 for 10% off. Defaults to 0. |
| Status | Yes | The customer's current status (for example Active, Inactive, Pending). Manage the available statuses in your settings. |
| Payment Terms | Yes | Default payment terms — for example Net 30 or Due on Receipt. Pre-selected to your first configured term. |
| Sales Rep | No | The sales representative(s) assigned to this customer. You can pick more than one. Defaults to your first rep; clear it if you don't want one assigned. |
| Tax Exempt | No | Toggle on to charge $0 sales tax on all of this customer's orders — for wholesale, resale, or non-profit accounts. Keep the customer's tax-exemption certificate on file in the profile's Notes tab. |
Note: Status and Payment Terms come pre-selected from your configured options, so you rarely need to change them. Sales Rep defaults to your first rep — reassign or clear it as needed.
Shipping Settings
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Default Shipping Method | Yes | The delivery option that pre-fills on this customer's orders (for example Standard Shipping, Will Call, or Local Delivery). Pre-selected to your first delivery option. |
Manage your delivery options in your order settings — see Shipping Configuration for how these work.
Products Display
Control which products this customer can see and order:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Standard and Exclusive Products | The customer sees all standard products plus any products marked exclusive to them. This is the default. |
| Exclusive Products Only | The customer sees only products specifically marked exclusive to them — useful for custom items, private-label goods, or contract pricing. |
Tip: Use Exclusive Products Only for a customer who should never see your general catalog — for example a contract account that only orders their own private-label cabinet doors. See Managing Customers for how to mark a product exclusive.
Enable Partial Payments
Toggle Enable Partial Payments to let this customer pay an order balance in installments instead of all at once.
- The customer can pay any amount toward an order and the remaining balance is tracked automatically.
- Multiple payments can be applied to a single order.
Note: This toggle only matters if partial payments are not already turned on account-wide. When your whole account already allows partial payments, the toggle shows as enabled and locked for every customer.
Billing Address
The billing address is used for invoices and payment processing, and it's the one address that's required.
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Full Name | Yes | Name on billing documents. |
| Address 1 | Yes | Street address. |
| Address 2 | No | Apartment, suite, unit, etc. |
| City | Yes | City name. |
| State / Province | Yes | State, province, or region. |
| Zip / Postal Code | Yes | ZIP or postal code. |
| Country | Yes | Defaults to your company's billing country. |
Shipping Address
The shipping address is used for deliveries and shipping-rate calculations. It's entirely optional.
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Full Name | No | Recipient name. |
| Address 1 | No | Street address. |
| Address 2 | No | Apartment, suite, unit, etc. |
| City | No | City name. |
| State / Province | No | State, province, or region. |
| Zip / Postal Code | No | ZIP or postal code. |
| Country | No | Country. |
Note: If you leave the shipping address blank, orders fall back to using the billing address for shipping.
Importing Customers from a CSV
Rather than adding people 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
- On the Customers page, click Import CSV in the top-right corner. The upload window opens.
- Choose your
.csvfile. - TimberCloud reads your file's header row and shows a set of mapping dropdowns. For each TimberCloud field, pick the matching column from your spreadsheet. Fields are grouped into Basic Fields, Billing Information, and Shipping Information.
- Map at least Name and Email, then map any other columns you want to bring in.
- Click Upload to start the import.
- When it finishes, you get a summary with lists of successful and failed rows, so you can review exactly which records imported and fix any that were skipped.
Fields you can map
- Basic Fields: Name, Email, 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 left empty, or filled from your company defaults (for example, a missing Country falls back to your company's billing country). For Customer Type, put business or individual in your spreadsheet.
CSV tips
- Include a header row with clear column names — those headers are what you match in the mapping step.
- Name must be present and unique on every row.
- If your shop takes payments, include a valid email for each customer so their payment record can be set up. Rows that fail import are listed so you can correct and re-upload them.
- Use consistent formatting for phone numbers and addresses.
- Leave optional columns blank when 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 far along it is. If your shop accepts payments, each customer's Stripe payment record may keep setting up in the background after the upload reports success.
When Customers Register Themselves
Customers can also create their own account through your storefront. Depending on your storefront settings, a newly registered shopper may need admin approval before they can place orders, and if their details match an existing customer record, a claim is queued for you to approve or deny (Build plan and up). See Customer Account Claims and The Customer Portal for how self-registration works.
Next Steps
- Managing Customers — tour the seven-tab profile and everything you can do after a customer exists
- Contacts — build a company-wide contact directory
- The Customer Portal — what your shoppers see when they log in
- Creating an Order — start an order that inherits this customer's defaults
- Customer Account Claims — approve shoppers who register against an existing account