Add Your Customers and Sites

A job is raised for a customer and a site, and two quiet fields on the customer, Tax rate and Payment term, decide the VAT and the due date on every invoice. This page adds your customers and their sites, and fills in the extra site details that hazardous work needs.

Before you start

• Your tax rates and payment terms exist. The customer form can only choose them, not create them. If the pickers say "No tax rates found." or "No payment terms found.", go back to step 5. See Set up tax rates, payment terms and nominal codes.
• You can add customers. Your Paperwork role needs to allow creating them. The Paperwork Owner role has every permission. See Set up your organisation and team.
• For each customer, to hand: the company name, trading address, and whether they are zero-rated or on a non-standard VAT rate. If you handle hazardous waste, also the address of every site you collect from.

Customers are under Relationships in the Paperwork sidebar. You can start with a few customers and add the rest as work comes in. Only the ones you will quote first need to exist now.

Add a customer

Open the customer form

Click Customers under Relationships, then New customer.

Fill in the name

Name is the only required field. Account number is your own reference. If you have a Companies House number, enter it under Auto-populate from Companies House and click Look up to fill in the name, address and SIC codes.

Add the trading address

Type a postcode into Find address by postcode to pick an address, or fill the lines in yourself. Under Billing, set a Billing name if invoices go to a different name, and leave Billing address is the same as the trading address ticked unless they go somewhere else.

Choose the tax rate and payment term

Under Company details, choose a Tax rate and a Payment term. See the next section for why. VAT number, Company registration number, SIC codes, Sector and Credit limit are optional.

Create the customer

Click Create customer. You land on the customer's record, where you add sites. Switch on Start this customer on stop first only if they should not be given new work yet.

Choose a tax rate and payment term

Both fields are optional, which is why they are easy to skip, and neither warns you when it is empty. They do their work when you invoice.

Payment term. The invoice due date comes from the customer's payment term. A customer with no payment term gets invoices with no due date at all.

Tax rate. For each invoice line, Paperwork looks for a VAT rate in this order and stops at the first it finds:

1. The tax rate on the customer's site.
2. The tax rate on the customer.
3. The default tax rate on the nominal code behind the line's container type or extra type.
4. Nothing. The line is invoiced with no VAT.

So a customer's Tax rate overrides the nominal code default, and a site's overrides the customer's. If your nominal codes already carry the right default rate (step 5), you only need to set a Tax rate on customers who are different: zero-rated, reverse-charge or on a non-standard rate.

Add a customer site

A site is a physical place where you collect or deliver. Sales and jobs are raised against a customer site, so add one for every location you will work at.

Open the Sites tab

Open the customer, click the Sites tab, then New site.

Fill in the site

Site name is required. Copy address from customer and Copy contact details from customer save retyping. Account number is your own reference.

Set a site tax rate only if it differs

A site's Tax rate overrides the customer's for work at that site. Leave it blank to use the customer's.

Create the site

Click Create site. Switch on Start this site on stop first only if the site should not take work yet.

Add the country and consignment note prefix for hazardous work

When a job includes hazardous waste, the job check reads two site fields. What happens depends on the country:

What the site says	What the job check does
Country is empty	Blocks: "The site's country is not set"
Country is not England	Warns only: "Site is in United Kingdom, not England" (naming the country you entered). The prefix is not checked
Country is England and there is no prefix	Blocks: "The site has no consignment note code prefix"

Check that Country reads England

Open the site and look at Country in its address. Picking a postcode does not always fill it in, and the empty box suggests "e.g. United Kingdom". Paperwork compares it with England, so a site that says "United Kingdom" gets the warning and skips the prefix check. Type England on every English site.

Set the Consignment note code prefix

Enter a 6-character Consignment note code prefix, for example GREENW. Paperwork removes anything that is not a letter or number, makes it upper case and pads a short one with Q. The form shows the result under the box as Code prefix:.

Link contacts and add the optional extras

Contacts are created on their own and then linked. On the customer, open Contacts and click Link a contact, and a site has its own Contacts tab. Choose a listed contact on your sales and jobs so the job carries a maintainable record. See Contacts.

These parts of a customer are optional, and you can add them whenever you need them:

• Groups on the Contacts tab, named sets of a customer's contacts such as "Accounts / Billing".
• Lists, your own named lists of values for the customer, with Add list.
• Purchase Orders, the customer's own purchase orders, each with a number, Valid from, Valid to and Order value (£).

If you skip this

• No customer or site — you cannot raise a job. A job needs a listed customer and site, ones that exist here, not a name typed into the sale. Otherwise the job check blocks with "This sale uses an unlisted customer" or "This sale uses an unlisted site".
• No payment term on a customer — their invoices have no due date, and nothing warns you.
• No tax rate anywhere — if the site, customer and nominal code all lack one, the invoice carries no VAT.
• Hazardous work, country not set — the job is blocked with "The site's country is not set".
• Hazardous work, England, no prefix — the job is blocked with "The site has no consignment note code prefix".
• Country says "United Kingdom" — only a warning, but the prefix is never checked, so you may find the gap later.
• A customer or site left on stop — the job check blocks with "Customer 'name' is on stop" or "Site 'name' is on stop". Take it off stop to continue.

Check it worked

• Open Customers. Each customer you added is listed, and opening one shows its Tax rate and Payment term where you set them.
• Open a customer's Sites tab. Every site you will quote for is listed.
• For hazardous sites, open the site. Country reads England and the Consignment note code prefix is filled in.
• Open the sale for your first job on step 11 and its Validation tab. The Customer and Customer site sections show no failure.

What to do next

Step 10, Set up email, sends your quotes and invoices from your own domain instead of Dsposal's. It is optional, but it is quickest to do before your first real quote goes out. Your first real job follows on step 11. By then you will have every list, supplier and customer it needs.

• Customers — stop, archive, portal access and the Xero link
• Contacts — adding people and linking them to customers and sites
• Finance — how invoices work out VAT and due dates
• Jobs — the full job check