Customers
A customer is an organization or account you sell to — the recipient of a sales order. Customers carry the classification, billing, and relationship details that sales reporting and broker commissions are built on.
Key fields
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
name | Customer name |
customerTypeId | The customer type (required) |
customerSegmentId | An optional secondary segment |
brokerId | An optional broker who intermediates the relationship |
brokerFeePercent | The broker's commission rate, when a broker is set |
parentCustomerId | An optional parent customer, for hierarchies (chains, banners) |
address, city, state, country, zipCode | Mailing address |
qboId | Optional QuickBooks Online identifier |
notes | Free-form notes |
isActive | Whether the customer is available for new orders |
Relationships
- Classified by a required customer type and an optional segment.
- May roll up to a parent customer, forming a hierarchy.
- May be linked to a broker, which seeds the broker and fee on new sales orders.
- Can have contacts attached (billing, purchasing, and so on).
- Referenced by sales orders.
A customer with sales orders against it can't be deleted; deactivate it instead.
Customer item numbers
Retailers and distributors give every product they buy their own item number and expect it on the paperwork they receive: Costco may call your Original jerky tray item 2049444. A customer item number is that code, kept per customer and product, next to your own SKU.
Item numbers are an organization setting, off by default: turn on Customer item numbers in Settings, Customers. Once on, each customer page shows an Item Numbers card where you add, change or clear the customer's code for a product.
- A code usually belongs to the purchaser, so set it on the parent customer (Costco, McLane). Every distribution center under it uses that code.
- When one distribution center calls a product something else, set a different code on that center. Clearing it falls back to the parent's code again.
- A code means one product across a purchaser and its distribution centers. Giving a second product a code the customer, its parent or one of its centers already uses is rejected (codes compare ignoring case). Two sibling centers can use the same code for different products, since each only reads its own and its parent's.
- Only products carry customer item numbers, never materials.
- The sales order packing slip prints a Customer Item # column next to the item number when at least one line has a code: the order customer's own, otherwise its parent's.
Integrations can find which product a distribution center means by a code in one call: list customer item numbers with the center's id, the code, and the option to include its parent's codes.
See also
Manage customers through the REST API or the MCP server.