Customer Management

Manage your entire customer lifecycle through natural conversation. Create customers, set up custom pricing tiers, manage tax exemptions, and maintain complete audit trails -- all without navigating complex forms.

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Overview#

Customer management in the AI-Native ERP covers the full lifecycle of customer records:

• Create new customers with addresses, pricing, and tax profiles in a single operation
• Update any customer detail -- from basic info to complex pricing tiers
• Deactivate customers while preserving historical transaction data
• Import customers in bulk from CRM systems, CSV files, or legacy platforms

Every customer change is tracked through the workflow system with full traceability: who submitted it, who approved it, and when.

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Multi-Entity Architecture#

Customers follow the Master + Entity Override pattern, giving you the best of both worlds:

• Master customers are defined once at the organization level -- name, email, tax ID
• Entity-specific overrides let each legal entity customize credit limits, payment terms, and addresses without duplicating data
• Effective views automatically resolve what each entity sees, merging master data with any overrides

This means a customer like "Acme Corporation" exists as a single record, but your US entity can set a $100K credit limit while your EU entity sets a EUR 80K limit -- independently.

Data Efficiency#

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Creating Customers#

Required Information#

Optional Information#

You can include any of the following when creating a customer:

• Contact details: phone, website, billing email
• Business classification: customer type (retail, wholesale, distributor, enterprise, government, nonprofit)
• Credit terms: credit limit, payment terms
• Defaults: currency, tax code, default revenue account
• Addresses: billing and shipping addresses
• Custom pricing: customer-specific pricing tiers for items
• Tax profiles: tax exemptions with certificate numbers
• Dimensions: department and location tagging
• Custom metadata: any additional JSON fields

Addresses#

Each customer can have multiple addresses with different types:

Addresses include street lines, city, state/province, postal code, and country.

Customer-Specific Pricing#

Set custom prices for specific items on a per-customer basis:

• Assign pricing tiers by item
• Set minimum and maximum quantity thresholds
• Define effective dates for pricing periods
• Override standard item prices for preferred customers

Tax Profiles#

Manage tax exemptions and special tax treatments:

• Assign exempt tax codes with certificate numbers
• Set effective date ranges for exemptions
• Track exemption certificate expiration

Dimension Tagging#

Tag customers with analytical dimensions for reporting:

• Department -- which department manages this customer relationship
• Location -- geographic classification for regional analysis

Use dimension type names (e.g., "department") and value codes (e.g., "SALES") when assigning dimensions.

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Updating Customers#

Customer updates support partial updates -- you only need to specify the fields you want to change. All other fields remain unchanged.

Updatable Fields#

• Master fields: customer name, email, phone, website, tax ID, billing email, notes, customer type, credit limit, payment terms, currency, tax code, metadata
• Addresses: add new, update existing, or remove old addresses
• Pricing tiers: add, update, or delete customer-specific item pricing
• Tax profiles: add exemptions, update certificates, or remove profiles
• Dimensions: update department or location assignments

Action-Based Changes for Related Records#

When updating addresses, pricing, tax profiles, or dimensions, each record uses an action field:

This lets you make multiple changes to different related records in a single operation.

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Deactivating Customers#

Customers are never hard-deleted by default -- they are deactivated. This preserves:

• Historical invoice and payment data
• Audit trail integrity
• Compliance with financial record-keeping requirements
• Accuracy of historical financial statements

Soft Delete (Default)#

• Customer is marked as inactive
• Hidden from active customer lists
• All historical data remains accessible
• Requires Manager and Controller approval

Hard Delete (Exceptional)#

• Permanently removes all customer data
• Requires CFO-level approval (3-step workflow)
• Only appropriate for test records or data entry errors
• Not recommended for customers with any transaction history

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Bulk Import#

Import customers from external sources with built-in validation and duplicate detection.

Supported Sources#

• CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot)
• CSV file exports
• Legacy ERP migrations
• Partner data feeds

Import Process#

1. Data validation (automatic) -- field types, lengths, formats, foreign key checks, business rules
2. Duplicate detection -- matches on tax ID or email (case-insensitive)
3. Manager review -- summary of validation results before execution

Import Options#

Validation Levels#

• Field validation: data types, string lengths, email format, currency codes
• Foreign key validation: payment terms, accounts, and entities exist
• Business rules: credit limits are non-negative, valid customer types, duplicate checking
• Warnings (non-blocking): unusually large credit limits, similar customer names

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Approval Workflows#

All customer operations go through risk-based approval routing:

Audit Trail#

Every customer operation generates a complete audit record including:

• Who submitted the change
• What was changed (before and after values)
• Who approved or rejected it
• Timestamps for each step

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Key Concepts#

Customer Types#

Payment Terms#

Payment terms (e.g., NET30, NET45, NET60) control when invoices are due. These must reference existing payment terms configured in your organization.

Credit Limits#

Credit limits are non-negative decimal values that represent the maximum outstanding balance allowed for a customer. The system can warn when credit limits are unusually large (over $1,000,000).