Managing Customers

SellUpdated October 19, 2026 · Reviewed by Peasy Team

The Customers page is your contact book for everyone you sell to. Add customer details, assign price lists, track order history, and keep everything organized.

How to Get There

Go to Sell > Customers in the sidebar.

Channels vs. Customers

Before adding customers, it helps to understand the difference between Channels and Customers:

  • Channels are sales outlets that aren't traditional customers — like a farmers market stall, your retail storefront, or a pop-up shop. Use channels to track sales through these outlets without treating them as full customer accounts.
  • Customers are the businesses or individuals you sell to directly. They can have contact info, billing details, and custom pricing.

Customers appear under Sell > Customers and channels appear under Sell > Channels. Channels can also be used as a reporting tag on sales orders, invoices, and sales-order spreadsheet imports, even when the buyer is a separate customer.

On the Channels page, Customers with Orders is the number of distinct buyers on non-deleted orders attributed to that channel. Importing an order through a channel updates this count, but it does not permanently assign that buyer to the channel. A saved channel association on a customer is a separate choice that can provide a default for future orders.

When to Use Channels

Use a channel when you want to record sales from:

  • Farmers markets or craft fairs
  • Your retail storefront
  • Point-of-sale (POS) systems that aren't integrated
  • Pop-up shops or temporary locations
  • Any sales outlet where you're capturing aggregate sales rather than individual customer orders

Creating a Channel

  1. Click + New Customer.
  2. Enter a name for the channel (like "Ballard Farmers Market" or "Retail Storefront").
  3. Click Create.

To record sales through a channel:

  1. Open the channel from your Customers list.
  2. Create a new order.
  3. Add the items you sold (for example, at the end of a market day, enter all the products you sold).
  4. Mark the order as fulfilled.

Each order represents a batch of sales through that channel — like a Sunday at the farmers market or a week of storefront sales.

Note: If you use Shopify POS, those sales import automatically and you don't need to manually create channel orders.

Parent Customers and Sub-customers

If you sell to customers with multiple locations or divisions, you can organize them using parent customers and sub-customers. This lets you:

  • Track orders for each location separately
  • See all orders across all locations rolled up to the parent
  • Maintain location-specific details while keeping the relationship visible

Example: Multi-Location Customers

Let's say you sell to Whole Foods, which has 30 locations. You can:

  1. Create a parent customer called "Whole Foods"
  2. Create sub-customers for each location like "Whole Foods Interbay", "Whole Foods Capitol Hill", etc.
  3. Link each sub-customer to the parent

When you view the parent customer (Whole Foods), you'll see orders from all sub-customers. When you view a sub-customer (Whole Foods Interbay), you'll see only that location's orders.

Setting Up Parent and Sub-customer Relationships

Step 1: Create the Parent Customer

  1. Click + New Customer.
  2. Enter the parent name (e.g., "Whole Foods").
  3. Fill in any shared details.
  4. Click Create.

Step 2: Create Sub-customers

  1. Click + New Customer again.
  2. Enter the sub-customer name (e.g., "Whole Foods Interbay").
  3. Fill in location-specific details like address and contact.
  4. Go to the Relationship tab.
  5. Under Parent Customer, select the parent you just created — or type a new name and click Create "<name>" to add the parent right there without leaving the form.
  6. (Optional) Under Channel, you can also associate this sub-customer with a channel for additional grouping (useful for regional sales reps or distribution territories). The same type-to-create shortcut works here for new channels.
  7. Click Create.

The sub-customer now appears in the list with the parent name shown underneath.

Tip: You don't have to set up the parent first. Anywhere you pick a parent customer or channel — the New Customer form or the Parent Customer and Channels fields on an existing customer's details panel — you can type a name that doesn't exist yet and create it on the spot.

Viewing Orders Across Parent and Sub-customers

  • On the parent customer page: You'll see all orders from the parent and all its sub-customers combined.
  • On a sub-customer page: You'll see only that sub-customer's orders, with the parent customer name displayed in the details panel.

This makes it easy to track performance by location while still seeing the big picture for the entire account.

Adding a Customer

One at a Time

  1. Click + New Customer.
  2. Fill in the details:
    • Customer Name (required)
    • Email — The first, primary contact email for this customer. Add more contacts after creating the customer and choose which receive invoices.
    • Phone — Contact number
    • Shipping address — Where orders for this customer are delivered (street, Address Line 2 for an apt/suite/unit, city, state, ZIP)
    • Billing address — Where invoices are billed. Leave Same as shipping address checked to reuse the shipping address, or uncheck it to enter a separate billing address (it has the same Address Line 2 field).
    • Any custom fields you've set up
  3. Click Create.

Check Create more to keep adding customers without closing the form.

With Beacon

Ask Beacon to add a customer, such as "Create a new customer: Target Co-op, buyer@targetcoop.com, net 30." Beacon replies that you can create it in the New Customer form on the Customers page, or that it can do it now, and shows two buttons:

  • Show me opens New Customer with those details filled in. Each field Beacon filled has a soft glow until you change it, and Create Customer is highlighted. Check the details and click Create Customer yourself.
  • Do it for me shows the new customer's details. Click Create customer to create it, or Cancel. After it is created, Undo this customer makes it inactive, as long as nobody has changed it and it has not gone to QuickBooks.

Use one or the other: once the customer is created either way, the other button no longer creates a second one. Beacon checks first that no customer already has that email.

For a sub-customer, such as "Add a customer called Acme West under Acme," Beacon shows an Open New Customer button instead. If the parent customer you name matches more than one customer, Beacon asks which one you mean first. If you close the form, click the button again to reopen it with the same details. The button works until you create the customer or for 30 minutes; after that the form opens blank. On the phone, continue the chat in Peasy on the web.

In Bulk

  1. Click the bulk add icon (table icon) in the toolbar.
  2. A spreadsheet-style form opens where you can paste or type multiple customers at once.

The bulk form accepts name, email, payment terms, price list, note, and shipping address (street, Address 2, city, state, zip). If you paste from a CSV, Peasy maps headers like address, address 2 (or suite/unit), city, state, and zip (or ship to address, shipping city, etc.) into the matching columns automatically.

Editing Customer Details

Click an editable field in the customer table to update it. Most changes save automatically. Click a Contacts cell to manage that customer's contacts; the address shown is the primary contact's email. A small +N badge shows how many additional active contacts the customer has. An empty cell shows Add contact on hover.

The Address column is the customer's shipping address. Click an empty address cell to add one, or click an existing address to edit the street, an optional Address Line 2 (apt, suite, or unit), city, state, and ZIP code. To edit the billing address (or to keep it separate from shipping), open the customer's detail panel — it has separate Shipping and Billing address sections, each with its own Address Line 2.

You can also ask Beacon to change a customer's name or its shipping or billing address, such as "Change Acme's billing city to Austin." Review the change, then click Apply changes; Undo these changes puts the old values back. If your company syncs customers to QuickBooks, a customer linked to QuickBooks is updated there too. See Using Beacon for Confirmed Edits.

Changing Payment Terms with Beacon

Ask Beacon to change a customer's payment terms, such as "Change Acme's payment terms to 45 days," or to clear them. Review the current and proposed terms, then tap or click Apply changes. For a customer group, each preview includes at most 10 customers; any next batch needs its own approval. Review the result on Customers in Peasy on the web.

Use Undo these changes to restore the previous terms when they still match Beacon's change. Existing invoice due dates stay unchanged. On the phone, review and approve the preview in your Ask Peasy conversation. See Using Beacon for Confirmed Edits for the full flow.

Changing Notes, Catalogs, and Ship-From Locations with Beacon

Ask Beacon to change a customer's Quick note, Catalog, or default Ship From location, or to clear one. For example, "Set Acme's catalog to Wholesale" or "Ship Acme's orders from the Denver warehouse." Name an active catalog or location in your company. Beacon picks the closest match and shows its name on the proposal, so check it before you apply. If the name matches more than one equally well, or none, Beacon asks which one you mean. A note change replaces the customer's whole Quick note. Review the proposal, then tap or click Apply changes.

If the catalog or location is archived before you apply, that customer is left unchanged. Use Undo these changes to restore the previous values when they still match Beacon's change. A customer whose previous catalog or location was deleted stays unchanged. See Using Beacon for Confirmed Edits for the full flow.

Changing Customer Email with Beacon

Ask Beacon to change a customer's email, such as "Change Acme's email to billing@example.com" or explicitly ask to clear it. Review the current and proposed email, then tap or click Apply changes. A cleared email appears as None. Each preview includes at most 10 customers, and any next batch needs its own approval. Review the updated email and primary contact on Customers in Peasy on the web.

Use Undo these changes to restore the previous email and affected contact changes when they still match Beacon's result. Peasy leaves later changes to those values alone. On the phone, review and approve the preview in your Ask Peasy conversation. See Using Beacon for Confirmed Edits for the full flow.

Customer Contacts

Click the Contacts cell in the Customers table, or open a customer and expand Contacts in the Details tab. Both places offer the same contact controls. Choose Add contact to save another email address, with an optional name and phone number, and set its Billing Emails preference. Click an active contact's card to edit it. Use its colored badge menu to deactivate it or choose Primary.

Every active contact email can identify this customer when that person signs in to the wholesale storefront, and can match the customer in incoming mail. If the same email is active on more than one customer, Peasy does not automatically choose one for storefront access or inbox matching. Deactivating a contact removes that association.

Click a contact's colored badge to set Primary, To · Billing, CC · Billing, or Off. The menu controls invoice emails and automatic invoice reminders. Primary always receives billing emails in To; making another contact primary switches that contact to To. A new additional contact starts at Off. Changing this setting does not change storefront access or incoming mail matching. You can still edit recipients for an individual invoice send.

You can search the Customers list by an active contact's email address.

Catalog Assignment

You can assign a catalog to a customer, which gives them customer-specific pricing and item availability on your catalog items. This is useful for wholesale customers, VIP accounts, or different customer tiers.

Set the catalog in the customer's detail view under the Catalog dropdown. See Catalogs: Custom Pricing and Availability for the full setup workflow.

Default Ship From Location

If your business has more than one location, each customer can have a default Ship From location. New sales orders for that customer pre-fill the ship-from field with this value, so you don't have to set it every time.

To set a customer's default ship-from location:

  1. Open the customer's detail panel.
  2. Click the Ship From field and pick a location.

Channels can also have a default — the Ship From column on the Channels page lets you set it inline.

If you don't set a customer default, new orders fall back to your entity's default location. The field doesn't appear at all if your business has only one location.

Customer Shipping & Billing Addresses

A customer record holds a separate shipping address and billing address. The customer's detail panel has both sections — the Shipping address is where orders are delivered (and prints as Ship To on packing slips and invoices), and the Billing address is where invoices are billed (and prints as Bill To on invoices). Each address has an optional Address Line 2 for an apartment, suite, unit, or floor, which prints on the document and syncs to and from QuickBooks. If the two are the same, use Copy shipping → billing (or Copy billing → shipping) so you don't retype it.

When you create a packing slip or invoice from a sales order, the Ship To auto-populates from the customer's shipping address and the Bill To from the billing address, and your Ship From auto-populates from the location's address (set up in Business Settings and Locations).

Adjusting an Address on One Order

Go to Sell > Sales Orders and open the order. Ship to appears at the top of the Fulfill panel, and Bill to appears at the top of the Invoice panel. Select the address you want to change, make the change, then click Save.

To reuse the other address, choose Copy from billing address or Copy from shipping address. Copy fills the form so you can review it; it does not save until you click Save. On desktop, closing with unsaved changes asks whether to Keep editing or Discard. On mobile, use Cancel or Save.

The saved address belongs to this order. It does not change the customer's default or invoices that already exist. Invoices created afterward use the order's saved address. Updating the customer record itself only changes the default for future orders; it never rewrites addresses already saved on existing orders or invoices.

Customers with Multiple Delivery Locations

If a customer ships to several distribution centers (think a regional grocery chain with multiple DCs), use parent customers and sub-customers. Create a parent for the brand and a sub-customer for each DC, each with its own address. When you create a sales order, pick the specific sub-customer and the right address flows onto the packing slip.

What Peasy Generates

Peasy generates packing slips from sales orders, plus invoices for billing. Businesses with configured custom templates can also print Bills of Lading (BOLs) and pallet labels from the order's printer menu. Before fulfillment, each shipping option creates one document for the complete order. After fulfillment, packing slips include one page per active fulfillment plus a final Not yet shipped page when quantities remain; BOLs and pallet labels continue to create one document per active fulfillment.

Standing Orders

In the customer's Order Status column, select the repeat icon and count to open their standing-order list. Select a template's T- number to open it in Sales Orders and manage its recurring defaults or schedule. See Managing Standing Orders for the full workflow.

QuickBooks Sync

If you've connected QuickBooks, you can sync your customers:

  • Select customers and use the Sync to QuickBooks button
  • Keep customer records consistent between both systems
  • See Connecting QuickBooks for setup

Exporting Your Customer List

To download some or all of your customers as a CSV:

  1. Select one or more customers using the checkboxes in the table.
  2. Click Export in the floating toolbar that appears at the bottom of the page.
  3. A CSV file downloads with the date in the filename (e.g. customers-export-2026-05-26.csv).

The export includes: Customer Name, Email, Terms, Catalog, Ship From, Address (street + city, state, ZIP), Note, Order Status, Payment Status, and Open Tasks.

This is handy for sharing your customer list with a partner, importing it into another tool, or keeping a snapshot for your own records.

Making a Customer Inactive

If a customer is no longer active:

  1. Select the customer(s) using checkboxes.
  2. Use the bulk action to deactivate them.

Inactive customers are hidden from dropdowns but their order history is preserved. You can reactivate them later.

Custom Fields

If you've set up custom fields (in Configure > Custom Fields), they'll appear as additional columns in the customer table. This lets you track business-specific info like account numbers, regions, or credit terms.

Good to Know

  • Customer emails are used for sending invoices — make sure they're correct.
  • Each customer can have multiple contacts. Set each contact's Billing Emails preference to To · Billing, CC · Billing, or Off to choose who receives invoices and automatic reminders. You can still edit To and CC when sending an individual invoice. See Creating an Invoice for the send flow.
  • Each customer can have a different price list for custom pricing.
  • The customer table shows order counts so you can see your most active accounts at a glance.
  • Channels have a simplified detail panel since they don't require full customer information like contact details or billing terms.
  • When viewing a parent customer, all orders from sub-customers appear in the order list, making it easy to see total sales across all locations.
  • Sub-customers can be linked to both a parent customer and a channel — useful for organizing by region, sales rep, or distribution territory.

Shopify Sales on Updated Stores

If Peasy has moved your Shopify store to the updated order handling, Shopify buyers are not added as customers. Their orders show under Shopify instead.

When the store has Shopify orders in the last 30 days, a Shopify bar appears above the customer table with the order count and revenue. Click View Shopify sales to open the Shopify sales page. It lists each order newest first, 50 per page, with its order name, date, units, revenue and cost. Customer reads Shopify on every row. Choose Last 30 days, Last 90 days or Last 365 days from the period menu, and use Previous and Next to page. A cost Peasy cannot work out yet shows Incomplete rather than $0. The page is read-only.

The bar does not appear on a store Peasy has not moved yet. Those Shopify orders still show on their buyers' customer pages.

Inviting Customers to Your Storefront

With your storefront enabled, open a customer and open the ⋮ menu to the right of New Order, then choose Invite to storefront. You can also use Invite to storefront in a customer row’s ⋮ menu. To invite several customers, select their rows in this table and choose Invite to storefront. Customers without an email show Missing email and have no email preview. Add an email in their Contacts section before inviting them. Inactive customers show Inactive customer and must be reactivated first. Remove customers with warnings from the batch to continue with the others. Review the messages and send immediately, or choose Save drafts to outbox from the send-button dropdown.

Open Outbox to review invitation drafts, failures and sent copies. See Storefront for the invitation flow and contact requirements.

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