Who is a client? How do I invite clients?

A client is an external user role on zistemo which has limited access to your admin account.
You can invite your customers as the clients so they will be able to view their invoices and estimates and pay them online.
To invite the clients to your company account go to, Contacts ➝  Clients ➝ Add a Client ➝ enter data, click ‘Invite contact’, assign a password and click ‘Save Client’

After clicking ‘Save Client’ the client will receive an e-mail invitation to their profile.

To delete clients go to, Contacts ➝ Clients ➝ check the box that refers to a client and click ‘Delete’

The client will be moved to the list containing deleted clients.

All deleted clients (clients from this list) will not be able to log in to your account.

Client’s Access

A Client has access to:

Dashboard

–  He can see his own Client’s Dashboard with the related information;

Sales

– Estimates – the client can see, print, create PDF, send a copy and approve related Estimates, also can comment/reply to them;

– Invoices – the client can see, print, create PDFs; can pay online through PayPal or by credit card (if it is allowed by the Account Owner), also can comment/reply to invoices;

– Payments – can see related payments.

Profile Settings

–  The client can see and update his own profile settings.

Reporting

– The client has access to his Account Statements.

Create Client

To create a client, go to Contacts ➝ Clients ➝ Add Client ➝ fill the necessary fields ➝ click ‘Save Client’

Allow Team Leader to add/edit clients

If you want, that your employee has ‘Team Leader’ as role, but also with the ability to create and edit clients, just allow it via staff settings:

After enabling the option, your team leader is able to add/edit clients.

Hide Financial Data on client dashboard (Role: “Team Leader”)

You can also enable “hide financial data on client dashboard”. By enabling this option, the “team leader” is not able to see any financial data on clients dashboard:

If option is enabled, following info is dibbled on clients dashboard:

Client page – data explanation

On the Create/Update Client page, you can keep various details about each client and also choose some default settings.
First, you can choose whether this client is an organization or a private person.

– Client number – internal client number (read more here).

– Default payment terms – set a specific due date which indicates by when this client should pay the invoices and it will become the default invoice option for this client.

You can also edit and configure specific payment terms for your clients:

You can also set the payment term as default company wide in the term settings:

– Client logo – the logo or photo of this client will be displayed on estimate/invoice dispute messages or comments.

– Client contacts – includes contact’s first name, last name, email, phone, mobile, fax, salutation (like Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, etc.), greeting on emails (dear, etc.), position (member’s position in this company – a field available only for “Organization”), department (where the contact works – again, a field available only for the “Organization” clients).

– Invite contact – the ability to invite this client’s contact (send an invitation email with the login/password to the client profile in your account), available only if you have entered contact’s email address. 

Note: It is not mandatory to invite the clients for them to see your invoices. When this check box is checked (see below) the client will receive an e-mail with the PDF Invoice attached. But to pay the invoices online you will need to send the invitation to your client to set up a zistemo account.

Address – the billing and shipping address for this client.

Note: If the checkbox ‘Same as Billing Address’ is checked then for the Delivery Note and Packing Slip we print the client’s address as on the Invoice preview:

Custom fields – these are the additional fields customized by you in “Settings” -> “Preferences”. Each client will also see them through his/her profile. For more details on this topic, please check this article.

Client default settings

-Default currency (default option for invoices/estimates)
-Default language (invoice/estimate language for this client, documents will be translated automatically if you are using the Default zistemo invoice/estimate template). If you are using the customized template, (the one that you created yourself), then the documents will be in that language you have chosen.
-Score (additional internal information)
-Default template
-Your vendor number for this client ( available only for “Organization”)
-Tax number (available only for “Organization”)
-Company registration number (available only for “Organization”)
-Default valid for – Choose as default the, ‘valid for’ option for all new estimates created for this client. Or, create a new one by clicking ‘+ Configure valid for’. You can overwrite valid dates on each estimate.
-Block this client 
-Reverse charge
-Allow cash discount
-Contact ID for Invoice Prefix
-Send payment notification – check this box if you want your client to receive the notifications when the payment was made.
– Use client currency on retainer statements – This option will show the retainer infos in the clients currency and not in your company base currency
– Add detailed timesheet to invoices by default: If you create an invoice timesheets to this client, a detailed timesheet will be added automatically. Learn more about detailed timesheet →

Internal notes – enter any data you need, it won’t be visible to your client.

Learn more about inviting a client to zistemo →

Why we use primary and non-primary contacts?

On the client page, you can create one primary and many non-primary contacts for a client.

Primary contacts cannot be deleted. This is the contact for the client which will always be used to receive estimates and approve/pay invoices.
You can select other client contacts to receive invoices or estimates on the invoice or estimate page.

Do my clients see how much they owe?

Yes, your clients will see how much they owe you on their profile dashboards.

You can view this same information from your profile by clicking on the client name on the grid:

How to find a specific client

We’ve made it very simple to filter and find clients. You can use the detailed “Search” filter on Clients List. Just click the “Search” gray tab at the top of the table -> fill the fields and click the green “Search” button:

Or you can simply find the client by using the Search Input Field. Type the client name or part of the name and hit the Enter key.

Client Net Revenue

Client Net Revenue = Client Revenue (Lifetime Value) – Expenses + Fees

Client Revenue (Lifetime value) – it’s the amount of all the invoices you send to your client, therefore, invoices with the following statuses: ‘activated’, ‘viewed’, ‘disputed’, ‘overdue’, ‘partial’ and ‘paid’. Invoices with statuses ‘draft’, ‘cancelled’ and ‘void’ is not included.
Expenses – it’s the amount of all billable expenses – expenses with statuses ‘unbilled’, billed’, ‘partial’ and ‘paid’. Expenses with status ‘non-billable’ are not featured.
Fees – the total amount of fees applied to the billable expenses.

Client Profit = Client Net Revenue – Staff Cost

Staff Cost – it’s the number of staff costs for the active projects belonging to this client. In other words, we calculate it as hours per staff * staff cost.

Client Net Revenue (block ‘Key performance indicators) – here you can make a comparison between specific time periods: this week and last week, this month and last month etc.

% change is calculated as: ((data of this period – data of last period) / data of last period) * %.
As example, as shown on the image above: % change = ((17.00 – 17.70) / 17.70) * 100% = -3.95 %

Note: all the information we display is in your account’s base currency.
We also have a special report ‘Revenue by Client’ where you can review the Client Net Revenue data in a foreign currency and in your base currency.

Import clients

You don’t always need to add a client manually.
You can simplify this process by using the import feature.
To import clients, go to Contacts ➝ Clients ➝ “Import” (or user menu -> “Import” -> choose “Import Clients” and click “Import”).

You can import clients from a CSV or a vCard directly from your profile:

1. If you choose to import a CSV file, next, choose the file from your computer or download a sample (click the “See a Sample” link) to know how this file should look like.

NOTES:

• The Client number needs to be unique in your file
• Client custom fields are not supported on import

Now pick from the file the contacts you want to import and click “Import Clients”.

2. When you opt for vCard, upload this file on the next step:

Then choose the client and click the “Import Clients” button:

Note: This way you can import not only the clients but any other data by picking the needed one from the drop-down.

How do I export my list of contacts?

To export data of all clients to an Excel document, go to My Profile (click on your name at the top of the page) ➝ Export

Note: This way you can export not only the clients but any other data by picking the needed one from the drop-down.

General

With zistemo you can add more information about your clients by using Custom Fields. You’ll see this tab under Client Details on the edit client page.

As you can see, Client Custom Fields could be different field types. These fields are also added to Client Export.

Of course you can also use this fields on estimates and invoices via placeholders:

Add new Custom Fields

To add new client custom fields go to Settings/Preferences/Custom Fields and click on “Add new client custom fields”:

After that you can create a new custom field. 

You can choose five different field types:

1. Text
   On a textfield users can enter any text they want wit max. 255 characters.

   

   If you insert Links to the text field it automatically recognize it and you can click the link on the client page

   

2. Date
   Users can enter date only. Allowed date format is the one from the company profile
   
   
3. Checkbox
   User can make binary choice only, e.g. true/false or yes/no. Checkboxes can be either active or inactive
4. Dropdown
   Users can select a value from a system list (e.g. staff members)
5. Picklist
   You can create your own list and users can select one value from that list only. If you enter values to a picklist use the semicolon ; as a separator (space isn’t needed)

If you enter values to a picklist use the semicolon ; as a separator (space isn’t needed)

1. Multi-Select Picklist
   You can create your own list and users can select multiple values from that list only. If you enter values to a multi-select picklist use the semicolon ; as a separator (space isn’t needed)

PS: Don’t forget to save your changes

For those who want to offer their clients an incentive to pay invoices promptly, zistemo introduced the ‘Cash discount’ option. This “early payment discount’” is used to improve the cash flow. For instance, you can allow a special discount of 5% if your client will pay the invoice within 3 days of receiving your invoice. With zistemo you can set it up easily, within seconds, by either choosing cash discounts as a default option straight from “Client details” or you can handle them individually while creating invoices.

You define your own terms, such as:
– “Cash discount percentage”– the percentage of the invoice’s total amount;
– A number of days they have to make the payment, for the discount to be applicable.

Set Up Cash Discount

To set up a cash discount, just pick among the following two options:

• Setup a cash discount for a specific client from “Client details’”➝ “Client default settings”.

Every time you will invoice this client, this discount will be activated automatically.

• Offer individual cash discounts directly on the invoice. If you change your mind and wish to deactivate cash discounts at some point, for a certain invoice, just untick the “Granted cash discount” box.

If you don’t set it in your “Client details”, you’ll have to activate the cash discount on the invoice when you create it. That’s it.

What happens when your clients use a cash discount?

When the payment is made, you will see a new payment entry in your zistemo payments list. It will be the invoice amount minus the cash discount amount.

At the same time, zistemo will automatically create a new expense named “Granted Cash Discount” with the cash discount amount.

If you have clients with overdue invoices and want to make sure your team doesn’t log time for these clients anymore, the ‘Block client’ option is very useful. Any clients who didn’t follow your business rules may be blocked by you. In this way you avoid that team members track time on blocked client projects or deliver goods to them.
To block a client, all you need to do is go to ‘Contacts’ ➝ ‘Clients’, select the client you want to block ➝ ‘Edit Client’ and mark the box ‘Block this Client’. Then press ‘Update’ to finalize.

There are countries where you are legally bound to add the client VAT ID (tax number) on the invoice if a certain amount is exceeded (e.g. Austria – for invoices over 8.000 € – or in case of a reverse charge notice).

Go to ‘Contacts’ ➝ ‘Clients’, Select the client ➝ ‘Edit Client’. Under ‘Client details’, pick ‘Client Default Settings’ and enter the client’s VAT ID as shown in the example below:

Once you tick the ‘Show on invoice’ box, we will automatically add it to the future invoices. Remember to save your edits by clicking ‘Save Client’ afterward. Here is a preview of how your client’s tax number will appear on the invoices:

Note: This option does work with all preset templates, if you create your own, please insert the placeholder “::client tax number::” whereever you prefer to show the VAT ID Info.

The field titled “Score” allows you to choose one of the following options:
– Active Customer
– Inactive Customer
– Lead
– Sales Qualified Lead.
Press “Save client” to make sure you saved the update.

Note that this field is just informative and it will not change/affect any features related to this client.
This info will be displayed on your “Clients” list: