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Ways to Add a Customer

There is more than one way a customer record appears. You can create one by hand with Add Customer, bring a batch in from a CSV file with Import, or let shoppers create their own accounts on your storefront. This says which route fits which situation, and how to tell afterwards which way a record arrived.

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A customer record can start in more than one place, and picking the wrong route is the usual reason a store ends up with the same person twice.

Route Use it for
Add Customer on the Customers list One person you are entering yourself
Import on the same row of controls A batch, from a CSV file
Shoppers creating their own accounts Anyone who signs up on your storefront, which needs no work from you

Before you begin

  • Your role includes Create customers for the first route, or Import customers for the second. The roles screen lists them separately.
  • You have searched the list for the person already, since none of these routes warns you about a duplicate.

Add Customer, for one person

The Customers list in the admin. The page heading sits at the top left and three controls at the top right: Export, Import, and (1) Add Customer, the filled button at the end of the row. Below them the tabs and the customer table (opens full size)

Add Customer (1) is the filled button at the end of the row, after Export and Import. It opens a blank form on its own page, and nothing is created until that form is saved. Adding a Customer walks the form, and Customer Creation Form is the field reference.

Opening the form is harmless. The record exists only after Save, so there is no half-made customer left behind if you change your mind.

Import, for a batch

Import sits beside it and takes a CSV file, the plain spreadsheet format every spreadsheet program can save. The dialog explains itself in a line, offers Add file, and keeps its confirming button out of reach until a file is chosen, reading Select a CSV file to continue until then.

Two things in that dialog are worth knowing before you start. It offers Download sample CSV, which is the quickest way to get the column headings right rather than guessing them, and its confirming button reads Upload and preview, so the file is shown back to you before anything is created.

Accounts shoppers make themselves

The third route needs nothing from you. Under Settings > Customer accounts, the Account type card describes the current option as allowing customers to create and sign in to new customer accounts, which is a record arriving in your list without anyone in the admin touching it. Customer Accounts covers that side.

Telling afterwards how a record arrived

The timeline on a customer's page is where this shows. A record somebody made in the admin carries the entry You created this customer. at the very bottom of its history, under the date it was made. A record that arrived another way has no such line, and its history begins with whatever the customer did.

That one entry is also the quickest way to audit a list you have inherited, since it separates the records your team typed from the ones the store collected.

If something goes wrong

  • There is no Add Customer button. Your role may lack Create customers.
  • Import is refused or missing. Importing is its own permission, Import customers, which a role can be without while still being able to add one customer at a time.
  • You created someone who already existed. Nothing in these routes checks. Merge Duplicate Customer Records covers putting the two back together, which is a longer job than searching the list first.

Next steps

Still stuck?

More in Customers

  • Customer Segments

    A segment is a saved question about your customers rather than a saved list, so its members change as they do. Tanqory gives you two ways to write that question, a query builder and a form of Field, Operator and Value filters, and this article covers both, plus the panel that starts closed, the AI Refine field and what to do when it answers with nothing, the forty-nine fields you can filter on, and everything the row menu lets you do to a segment afterwards.

  • Customer Tags

    A tag gives a group of customers a name so it is already assembled when you need it. This article covers where tags are set, one record at a time or in bulk from the list, what a tag is actually good for once it exists, and the one thing it will not do, which is answer the search box.

  • Edit a Customer Record

    The Edit control on the Customer panel opens five things, not four: contact information, addresses, marketing consent across three channels, tax details, and adding the customer to a company. This walks each dialog, what it asks for, which fields are required, and which of them the store acts on without asking you again.

  • Viewing the Customer List

    The Customers page is where most customer work starts, and four bands sit above the table before you reach a single row. This article covers what each band is for, the segment bar and its templates, saving a tab of your own, and the ways out of the page to one record or to a file. It also takes the two controls that are easy to miss entirely: the selection bar, which does not exist until you tick a row, and the counter at the foot that tells a short list apart from the first page of a long one.

All 49 articles in Customers

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