Customers & Vendors

Organize every business relationship in one place -- stored locally in your PostgreSQL database, never uploaded to external servers.

Registering a New Customer

  1. Open the Client Directory from the sidebar navigation
  2. Press the Add Customer button
  3. Complete the customer profile form:
    • Name -- the individual or business name
    • Email -- used for delivering invoices electronically
    • Phone -- a primary contact number
    • Address -- their billing address for invoices
  4. Press Save Customer to add the record to your local database

Registering a New Vendor

  1. Open the Vendor Directory from the sidebar navigation
  2. Press the Add Vendor button
  3. Complete the vendor profile form:
    • Name -- the supplier or service provider name
    • Email -- their preferred email for correspondence
    • Phone -- a direct line for inquiries
    • Address -- where the vendor is located
    • Account Number -- the identifier they have assigned to your account
  4. Press Save Vendor to commit the entry

Monitoring Customer Balances

Quickly see how much each customer currently owes:

Monitoring Vendor Balances

Stay on top of amounts you owe to suppliers:

Multiple Contacts per Customer

A single customer can have as many contacts as you need -- one for billing, another for the owner, another for the technical team. Each contact carries its own email, phone, role, and delivery preferences.

Adding Contacts

  1. Open any existing customer from the Client Directory
  2. Scroll to the Additional Contacts section in the edit modal
  3. Click + Add Contact to insert a new row
  4. Fill in the name, email, phone, and role
  5. Use the checkboxes to specify whether the contact should receive Invoices, Estimates, and/or Statements — each is controlled independently
  6. Click Save on the row to persist it

The Primary Contact

Exactly one contact on each customer is designated as Primary -- that's the person who appears in the To: line of every invoice email. You can promote any contact to Primary at any time; the system automatically demotes the previous Primary and keeps the legacy primary-email field in sync for reports.

How the Email Send Uses Contacts

Contacts on Vendor Records

The same multi-contact capability applies to vendors. Open any vendor record, find the Additional Contacts section, and build a list of people who should receive bills or account statements from that supplier. A designated primary contact keeps the vendor's legacy email field synchronized for payment workflows and existing reports.

Existing customers: When you upgrade to this version, every customer with an email already on file is automatically promoted to have a Primary Billing contact. Nothing to do -- just start adding more contacts where you need them.

Organizing Contact Details

All contact data is stored in your local PostgreSQL database and remains on your computer at all times:

Worth noting: Maintaining accurate email addresses for your customers means you can dispatch invoices straight from Kantivo without switching to a separate email client.

Vendor Documents

When you scan receipts or vendor invoices through Tools > Receipt Scanner, you can assign each document to a vendor. All assigned documents appear under the Documents tab on the vendor's detail page.

Assigning a Vendor During Scan Review

  1. Open Tools > Receipt Scanner and upload a receipt or vendor invoice
  2. After AI extraction completes, click Review
  3. In the review modal, use the Vendor dropdown to select an existing vendor or choose + Add new vendor to create one
  4. Click Create Bill or Record Expense to finalize

Viewing Documents on a Vendor Profile

  1. Navigate to Vendors and click the vendor name or the activity icon
  2. Select the Documents tab
  3. Each card shows the file name, type (Receipt or Vendor Invoice), extracted amount, upload date, and link status
  4. Click View Document to open the original scanned file

Viewing Receipts on Bills and Transactions

Bills created from scanned documents display an Attached Documents section at the bottom of the bill detail view. Transactions created from scans show a paperclip icon in the actions column of the Transaction Register.