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 can’t I delete a client? I’m getting a “Please correct the following” error message.

You cannot delete a client if this client is associated with an active invoice, estimate or project.
To delete a client – first delete all related invoices, estimates, and projects.

Invite and Re-Invite client

As you already know, you can invite client’s contacts by entering their first name, last name and email, then marking the checkbox ‘Invite contact’ and entering the temporary password (it’s the password available when logging in for the first time – during the first log-in to the client’s account, the client will be able to change the password):

After you click ‘Save Client’, this client will receive an invitation.
Note: if you don’t want to invite this contact, just leave the box ‘Invite contact’ unchecked.
You are able to invite clients at any time. But if for any reason your client lost the invitation email – you can reinvite them. The steps are similar to ‘Invite Contact’, but if this client was already invited, you will see the checkbox ‘Re-invite contact’:

By the way, you are also able to change the invitation email. You can find it, review and modify in Settings -> Text Templates -> pick the ‘Email – New Clients’ text type.

Learn more about text templates from here.