Managing customers and duplicate records

What is a customer record for?

A customer record brings together the identity, contact details and billing information of a person or business. It can be linked to bookings, registrations, payment requests, invoices, gift cards and credits. It belongs to the currently selected organisation: finding a customer in one organisation does not mean that they exist in another.

The billing customer is not necessarily the participant. For example, a business may pay for a training course for three employees. It is better to keep one record for that business and enter the participants' names separately when registering them. Do not create three copies of the business to represent those people.

Access: Dashboard → Customers. What you can view and which actions are available depend on your permissions within the organisation.

Dossier tabs are independent: follow-up and calls require Customer follow-up, appointments require Appointments, quotes require Quotes, contracts require Commercial contracts, private documents require Customer documents, and projects/tasks each require their own module. The Customers directory and its internal notes remain available under their own permissions. Indicators and history never expose data from a disabled module.

Creating a customer

Before creating a record, search for the name, email address or tax identifier. This reduces duplicates and avoids spreading future payments across several records.

1. Open Customers, then choose the create action.
2. Enter the name used to find the customer in Bookelio.
3. Add the legal name if the customer is a business and it differs from the usual name.
4. Complete the email address and telephone number where known.
5. Select the type of tax identifier, then enter the corresponding identifier if needed.
6. Complete the billing address, checking the country in particular.
7. Optionally enter the home address and preferred language.
8. Save. Wait for confirmation before using the record in another operation.

Do not invent an email address to work around a missing field. Some messages require a real address. An error in the customer's email address can also prevent their history from being found for training discounts.

Billing address and home address

The billing address represents the identity to which documents are addressed. The home address is separate information, useful in participant exports in particular. A home address therefore does not automatically replace the billing address.

In a training export, you can choose which of the two addresses takes priority. If you are preparing a postal mailing, check that priority and the exported columns rather than assuming that everyone has a complete home address.

Preferred language

The record offers French, Dutch and English. When a payment request is created with a customer, that customer's language is used. An invoice subsequently created from the request uses the payment request's language.

Changing a customer's language today should not be treated as reissuing requests and invoices that already exist. Check the document concerned if you need to handle an existing case.

Searching, filtering and sorting

Directory filters are applied on the server. The displayed rows therefore match the criteria sent to Bookelio, rather than just filtering a locally loaded portion of the list.

The compact toolbar lets you combine:

• a text search;
• the country;
• whether an email address is present or missing;
• whether a tax identifier is present or missing.

The search covers the name, legal name, email address, telephone number, tax identifier, billing city, postcode and street, and the home city and postcode, among other fields. It ignores case, accents and punctuation to make searching easier. Several words can match different fields in the same record: for example, search for atelier namur to combine part of a name with a city.

On a large screen, click the Name, Email, VAT / company ID or City column heading to sort the list. A second click reverses the order. On a narrower screen, use the sort selector. The initial order is alphabetical by name; missing values stay at the end for the relevant columns.

The counter shows the number of results compared with the directory total. Reset restores the default criteria and sorting. Use it when a customer seems impossible to find: a filter for missing email addresses can hide a record whose address has just been completed.

Opening and browsing a customer record

Select a customer's name in the directory to open their record. The Contact tab contains contact details, tax identity, preferred language and addresses. When the Production module is enabled and your permissions allow it, the Projects and Tasks tabs show only items linked to that customer. These lists are paginated; they also include archived items and, for tasks, completed work.

Internal notes are available in the Contact tab and the standard customer creation/edit form. Authorized members share these notes independently of CRM; customers cannot see them. Save your changes explicitly. If another member changed the notes, your draft is preserved and you must reload the latest version before saving. Merging customers preserves both records' notes; it is refused if the combined text exceeds 20,000 characters.

Contact opens first. Record summary has a separate tab, loaded only when opened and shown according to CRM permissions. The Quotes and Invoices tabs show server-filtered pages according to your rights: customer quotes include those of converted prospects, even after a customer merge; invoices belong to the current customer. Links and page numbers stay in the address so you can return to the same view.

When the CRM is enabled and your permissions allow it, the Contact tab also shows a separate sales profile. Choose Start follow-up or Edit to record the source, business-partner indicator, owner and short internal notes. These fields add sales context; they do not replace contact or billing details.

The profile displays an Active, Passive or Inactive sales status and the date of the latest known activity. Bookelio recalculates it from non-archived calls, completed appointments, quotes with a valid acceptance, approved bookings, confirmed registrations for training or scheduled group sessions, and verified payments whose net amount remains positive after refunds. The default thresholds are 30 days for Passive and 90 days for Inactive; authorised users can change them in CRM follow-ups.

The History tab combines the permitted notes, calls, appointments and documents with exact counters, progressive loading and a Prospect or Customer origin when the customer came from a conversion. Notes, post-its and documents remain available for reference but do not reactivate the sales status by themselves.

No known activity simply means that no dated sales activity is available yet. Archiving the sales profile stops its recalculation without archiving or deleting the customer and without changing bookings, financial information or possible portal access; use Restore to resume tracking from the eligible activities that were retained.

Bookelio loads only the open tab and completely omits a section you are not allowed to view. A missing section therefore does not mean that the customer has no projects or tasks.

On the record, New task is the primary action. The adjacent arrow opens New project and New quote when you have the required permissions. These actions keep the customer selected; check the context before saving, as pre-filling does not create anything automatically. Customer names shown in projects and tasks open the same record when you have read permission. The return link keeps the path between customer, project and task.

Editing a record

Open the customer record and choose Edit customer, or use the edit action in the directory. Correct the relevant fields and save. Then check the displayed record.

New operations will use this information, but financial documents that already exist may retain the contact details recorded when they were created. Correcting a record and correcting an invoice are two different operations. Read Invoices and credit notes before making changes to an issued document.

Merging two duplicate customers

Merging brings together two records that genuinely represent the same customer. It is not suitable for replacing a business with one of its employees or combining two people who simply share an email address.

1. Identify the record you want to keep.
2. Open its Merge action.
3. Choose the duplicate customer to delete. This selection uses the available directory, even if the main list was filtered.
4. Compare the information displayed side by side.
5. For each field, choose the value from the retained record or the duplicate. The retained record's values are selected initially.
6. Review the retained record's name, the duplicate and the chosen contact details before confirming.

The duplicate's linked records are transferred to the retained customer, then the duplicate customer record is deleted. This includes bookings, registrations, documents, payments, gift cards, credits, CRM follow-up, quotes, projects, tasks and time entries. The duplicate is not simply hidden; do not rely on an undo button to restore both records.

A merge is refused when both customers have a registration for the same group session. Bookelio does not delete or automatically consolidate either registration, even when neither has a payment, so their statuses and history remain intact. Reconcile the duplicate registration before attempting the merge again. Other incompatible links, such as two different referrers, may require the same prior reconciliation.

Deleting is not merging

A customer's row also offers a delete action when your permissions allow it. This action does not transfer the customer's history to another record. If the problem is a duplicate with bookings or payments, consider merging first.

Before deleting a record, check that it is no longer needed for your operations. Deleting a customer must not be interpreted as cancelling services or issuing a refund. Handle those situations through the relevant functions, and do not delete a customer simply to remove them from a search.

If the deletion is refused, the confirmation window gives the reasons: group class enrollments, credits, software subscriptions, verified payments in the commercial follow-up, commercial contracts, client portal access, invoices in preparation or recurring invoicing rules. Documents, payments and bookings do not block deletion: they are kept but no longer linked to the customer. A converted prospect is also kept and becomes unconverted again.

Resolving common situations

The customer does not appear

Check the active organisation, reset the filters and search in turn for the name, email address and tax identifier. Wait for loading to finish after a search. If the record exists under a different spelling, correct it rather than immediately creating a new one.

The email address is correct, but a participant receives nothing

For training, the participant's address may take priority over the billing customer's address. Check both in the registration list. A correct billing email address does not automatically correct an incorrect participant address.

A discount does not recognise the history

Training loyalty calculations rely on the billing customer's email address and recorded payments. Compare the records used for previous registrations, then consult the discount simulator. Merging records does not replace checking the pricing conditions.