Documentation/ Master records and catalogues/ The client master
The client master
The client master holds the records of the companies you invoice. It is simpler than the supplier master, with no payment terms and no contact details, and its job is to identify the recipient on sales invoices and sales delivery notes.
Database › Client master
On this page
The record, field by field
| Field | What it is | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Tax number | The client's tax reference. | Yes |
| Trading name | The name they are known by. | Yes |
| Registered name | The full legal name. | No |
| Address and postcode | Their registered address. | No |
| Nominal account | Their client account in your chart of accounts. | No |
| Practice client | The managed company they belong to. | On practice accounts only |
The tax number is required
Here is a difference from the supplier master worth holding on to: on a client record the tax number is required; on a supplier's, it is not.
Which makes sense. A supplier can turn up on its own, created out of a document whose reference may not have been read properly. A client, on the other hand, is created so that you can issue documents to them, and a sales invoice without the recipient's tax details is not valid.
The nominal account
The record takes a single nominal account, chosen with a search that finds accounts by code or by name within the account's chart of accounts.
It is the client account that collects what is owed to you. Unlike a supplier, which has two, debt and spend, one is enough here.
Practice client
On accountancy practice accounts, each client belongs to one of the companies you handle. The field is filled in with a search by tax number or name, and the list lets you filter on it so you can work on one company at a time.
It is what keeps each managed company's masters apart.
The list's actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| New | Creates a record by hand. |
| Delete | Removes the ticked clients. |
| Import | Loads records from an Excel or CSV file. |
| Export | Downloads the list to Excel. |
The search box finds clients by tax number or registered name, and both of those columns can be sorted. Each row also offers edit and delete on its own.
The client master has no duplicate merging, unlike the supplier and product masters. If repeated records turn up, the spare one has to be deleted by hand, after checking it has no documents attached.
Importing from Excel
The import takes Excel or CSV files up to five megabytes. The format is shorter than the supplier one:
| Columns | Which |
|---|---|
| Required | Tax number, trading name |
| Optional | Registered name, address, postcode |
| The link | The practice client's tax number, which attaches the record to its managed company automatically |
There are no contact columns: the client master stores no email addresses or phone numbers.
It is the normal way to get going: load the whole client base in one pass instead of creating records as you come to invoice each one.
How it differs from the supplier master
| Clients | Suppliers | |
|---|---|---|
| Tax number required | Yes | No |
| Nominal accounts | One | Two: supplier and expense |
| Contact details | No | Yes: two emails, two phones and WhatsApp |
| Payment terms | No | Yes: method, terms and date |
| Merge duplicates | No | Yes |
| Import and export | Yes | Yes |
Things that come up
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| It will not save the record | The tax number or the trading name is missing: both are required. | Fill in both. |
| Rows rejected on import | Some row has no tax number or no trading name. | Go over the file and import again. |
| The same client appears twice | It was created by hand and by import as well. | Delete the spare record: there is no merging here. |
| A client is not in the list | There is a practice client filter on. | Clear the filter. |
| You look for the client's contact details and they are not there | The client master stores no email addresses or phone numbers. | Keep that information outside the record. |