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Creating and Managing Customers

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Corey Syrnyk
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Customers can be individuals or companies that subscribe to a product or service.

There are three methods to create customers:

  • Manually, by entering information through the Stax Bill interface. This method is useful for sales by phone or in person.
  • Customer Self-Serve, where customers enter their own information using web pages. This method is the fastest way to obtain online sign-ups. Check-out pages can also be used internally, by a sales team or order-entry team. Typically you would create your own self-serve portal using your own internal web development resources and have it redirect credit card information to Stax Bill. Contact Stax Bill Customer Support (support@staxbill.com) for more information.
  • Programmatically, using the Stax Bill API. This method requires development and is intended for advanced users. For information, see API Overview.

When adding a customer manually, you create a customer account that contains:

  • Contact Information
  • Addresses, including billing addresses and optional shipping addresses
  • Payment information and billing preferences for this customer are discussed in Managing Customer Billing Settings and Payment Methods

Multiple subscriptions can be added to the Customer. See Working with Subscriptions.

When a new customer is created, they are in "Draft" status. You can proceed to create subscriptions, and manage payment methods before you activate the customer.

To create a customer:

  1. From the Customer tab, click on Create Customer.
  2. The Contact Information section contains the customer's contact details for email invoices, communications, and so on. These fields populate the customer section at the top of invoices and can be leveraged as merge points in email communications or as labels in the Customer Self-Service Portal. Stax Bill does not enforce any mandatory Customer Contact fields but strongly advises that at least one Customer Contact field be populated to facilitate customer management. 
    • Company Name: This field can hold the Company name of the customer for billing entities that represent a Business to Business relationship to the Account
    • Customer Name: The primary billing contact of the customer entity, broken down as Salutation, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name and Suffix
    • Email: You can enter both primary and secondary email addresses on a billing entity.  Multiple email addresses can be maintained in these fields separated by a semi-colon (;). The primary email address field is used by the Stax Bill system as the destination email for any outgoing communications with the customer. Secondary email addresses are for informational purposes only.
    • Phone: Both primary and secondary phone information can be maintained for informational purposes on a customer entity. These fields can hold alpha-numeric information and phone number formatting is not enforced by the Stax Bill System.
  3. The Identification section contains some general data about the customer.
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    • The Customer ID field is an arbitrary identifier used to uniquely identify this customer in your own systems. Stax Bill does not enforce any validation or uniqueness rules on this field.

      Note: The Customer ID field label can be customized to match your own internal processes or systems. See Configuring Display Defaults: Customer Labels for more information.

    • The Currency field will be displayed if your Stax Bill environment is configured to support more than one currency. Choose this Customer's currency from the drop-down.

      Important: Once a currency has been assigned and the Customer has been activated, it cannot be changed.

    • If you are using Stax Bill's Hierarchy feature, the Parent ID field will be displayed in this section. Setting the Parent ID on a customer will set the newly created customer as a child of the parent and provide them access to their parent's payment method(s). If a customer is flagged as being a child, a ParentID must be entered before creating the customer. Specify a parent ID directly or use the search tool to lookup the Parent ID. The parent must meet the following criteria:
      • It must be configured to use the same billing currency as the current customer.
      • It must be an "Active" customer.

  4. The Sales Tracking section allows you to segment your customer base by up to five predefined categories of values. These values can be used with Stax Bill reports to provide more detailed reporting by segment. They can also limit the view of customers by users of the system. See Creating a Limited Agent Role and Configuring Sales Tracking Codes for more information.

    Note: The Tracking Code field linked to your Role will be read-only if you are logged in with a Limited Agent role.

  5. The Tracking Data section contains fields that you can use to track the behaviour of your users, for example, on a website that is tooled with Google Analytics tracking codes. These fields are typically populated by an automated process via the Stax Bill API when used for this purpose.

    Tip: The Tracking Data fields can be repurposed to suit your own needs if you are not using them for analytics tracking. The labels can be customized, and these reference fields appear in reports (under their standard Stax Bill field names). See Configuring Display Defaults - Customer Labels for more information.

  6. The Custom References section provides three additional reference fields that can be used for additional integration or mapping information to other systems. No field validation is performed.
  7. The Salesforce section allows you to specify a link to a Salesforce account record if the Stax Bill Plug-in for Salesforce is configured for your account. For more information, see Salesforce Plug-in Overview.

  8. The QuickBooks section lets you specify a link to a QuickBooks Online customer record if the integration is configured. 

  9. The HubSpot section lets you link customers and deals/ subscriptions. See Creating a Customer in HubSpot for more information.

  10. The NetSuite section allows you to specify a link to a NetSuite customer record if the Stax Bill Plug-in for NetSuite is configured. For more information, see NetSuite Plug-In Overview.

    If your organization does not have the NetSuite plug-in, you will see a brief message asking you to contact Stax Bill Support to enable integration on your account.

  11. Click Create to create a new customer. Once created, you will be on your new customer's Contact screen and can proceed to add additional information and subscriptions to their account.

A Note on Customer Status

Initially, all customer accounts are created in Draft status. While in Draft mode, the billing run will ignore this account and its associated subscriptions. The Draft status is useful when setting up a customer in advance.

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 Click Activate to move the customer from Draft to Active status. You can also activate any draft subscriptions, if applicable, when the customer becomes active.

Tips:

  • You are not required to add subscriptions when creating the customer. You can add subscriptions at a later time. For additional information on Subscriptions, see Working with Subscriptions. 
  • No customer fields are mandatory; Stax Bill generates its own Stax Bill ID to uniquely identify each customer.
  • The Customer ID field is an open text field that can be used to hold your Reference Number or Code that identifies this customer in your system. Although it is strongly recommended that this field is populated, it is important to note that the Stax Bill system will not enforce uniqueness on this field or force it to be mandatory.