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

Given Name and Surname Fields

When a client is a person rather than a company, Kantivo lets you store a discrete First Name and Last Name alongside the primary Client Name. Both are optional and sit just below Client Name in the Add/Edit Client panel.

• The Client Name remains the master label. Whatever you type as the Client Name is what continues to appear on invoices, statements, and throughout the client directory. The given-name and surname entries are supplementary, so prior records and business accounts behave identically to before.
• Designed for tidier reporting. Exporting your client directory or an individual customer report to CSV now includes separate first-name and surname columns, and the directory file is ordered alphabetically by surname — convenient for grouping individuals or driving a mail merge.
• Optional for organizations. For a business customer, just leave the two fields empty; everything else stays the same.

For instance, a practitioner records Client Name as "Autumn Wright" and then adds First Name "Autumn" and Last Name "Wright". The invoice continues to show "Autumn Wright", while the exported directory files her under W with clean name columns for analysis.

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

Setting a Vendor's Default Expense Account

When you scan a receipt or a supplier invoice, Kantivo normally works out which expense account to use by reading the document. If you buy from the same supplier regularly, you can skip that step and tell Kantivo the answer up front.

1. Open the Vendor Directory and click the vendor you want to set up
2. Scroll to the Default Expense Account section of the vendor form
3. Choose an account from the dropdown -- it lists your expense and cost-of-goods accounts
4. Press Update Vendor to save

From then on, any receipt or vendor invoice you scan that is matched to that vendor is assigned to the account you chose, instead of being worked out from the document text.

Points worth knowing

• It is optional and per-vendor. The field starts empty on every vendor, existing ones included. Leave it blank and that vendor's scans behave exactly as they always have.
• The default wins. When a default is set, it takes precedence over what the document says -- that is the point of setting it.
• You can still change it on the receipt. The account is a starting point on the scan review screen, not a lock. Adjust any individual receipt before you post it.
• Only expense and cost-of-goods accounts appear. If an account you expect is missing, check its type in the Chart of Accounts.
• Manually keyed bills are not affected. This setting applies to scanned documents. Entering a bill by hand still asks you for the account.

Monitoring Customer Balances

Quickly see how much each customer currently owes:

• The customer roster displays a running Balance beside every name
• Select any customer to drill into their complete transaction timeline
• Review outstanding invoices, recorded payments, and any issued credits
• Produce a formal customer statement for your records or to share with the client

Merging Two Customers

Merging moves everything on one customer to another, then removes the first. Use it for a duplicate record, or when a QuickBooks import listed a parent and its sub-customer separately. Available from version 2.7.0, to users with the Manager or Accountant role.

1. Open the customer and click 🔀 Merge
2. Under Remove this customer, confirm the record that goes away. Use Swap which one stays if you have them reversed
3. Under Keep this customer, choose the record that stays
4. Read the preview: what moves, how many of each, and the combined balance
5. Optionally tick the box to apply imported credits to open invoices
6. Tick the acknowledgement and click Merge

What changes, and what does not

• Invoices, payments, credits, estimates, journal lines and every other linked record now name the customer you kept
• Amounts, dates and ledger accounts do not change, so your financial statements stay the same
• The kept customer's details stand. A blank contact field or a blank address is filled from the removed customer, and its notes are added beneath the kept customer's
• The whole merge succeeds or nothing changes. Two customers linked to different Stripe customers or different intercompany partners cannot be merged

Applying imported credits

If either customer has imported journal entry or credit memo lines that credit Accounts Receivable and never reached an invoice, the preview offers to apply them. It uses the same matching as the QuickBooks import: an invoice with the exact balance first, then the oldest. Any excess stays as a credit on the customer. Unlike the merge itself, this step records payments against the invoices, which is why it is optional.

Client portal sign-ins

A customer has one portal sign-in. If both customers have their own, the kept customer's sign-in sees all the records and the removed customer's loses access. If only the removed customer has one, it moves across and also sees the kept customer's records. The preview names the address affected.

Before you merge

• A merge cannot be undone. The audit log keeps a snapshot of the removed customer and a count of what moved
• A later QuickBooks import that names the removed customer creates it again, so finish importing first where you can

Client Portal Access

Give clients self-service: with a portal sign-in they check open invoices, their balance and payment history, and pull down receipts whenever they like, which means fewer "can you resend that invoice?" calls.

Sending an invitation

1. On the customer's record, go to the Customer portal panel.
2. Choose Invite to portal. Your client gets an email from your business containing a personal link that works once and expires after 7 days; they use it to set their own password.
3. Track progress right there (not invited, invited on a date, active or revoked) and Resend or Cancel the invitation if plans change.

Access is invitation-only, so no one can register themselves against a customer account. Each client sees just their own records. A single sign-in can cover several of your customers, handy when one owner runs multiple entities, with a switcher to move between them. Forgotten passwords are handled by an emailed one-time reset link, and Revoke access disables a client's portal immediately.

Monitoring Vendor Balances

Stay on top of amounts you owe to suppliers:

• The vendor roster shows an up-to-date Balance for every entry
• Select any vendor to examine their full activity history
• Inspect open bills, payments you have made, and applied credits
• Generate a vendor statement to reconcile against their records

Combining Several Bills Into One Payment

Paid a supplier for a handful of bills with one transfer, check, or card charge? Kantivo captures that as a single combined payment, keeping your ledger aligned with what actually shows on your statement.

1. Select the vendor in the Vendor Directory and choose Record Payment.
2. The payment screen lists each outstanding bill with a selection box and its applied amount. Check off the bills this payment covers.
3. Type in the full payment total and pick the bank or card account the funds left from.
4. Confirm with Record Payment.

Kantivo writes one outgoing payment for the combined total and distributes it across the chosen bills for you. Each bill is then flagged paid or part-paid and tied back to that single payment record.

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

• The Primary contact is always the To: address.
• Other contacts are Cc'd based on the document type: Invoices checkbox for invoice sends, Estimates checkbox when emailing a quote, Statements checkbox for statement sends.
• Manually entered Cc addresses in the send dialog are combined with the automatic contact-based list and deduplicated before delivery.
• Each document type resolves its own recipient list independently, letting you send quotes to the project team, bills to accounts payable, and statements to the principal with no manual intervention.

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.

Organizing Contact Details

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

• Separate Addresses: Maintain distinct billing and shipping addresses for any contact
• Internal Notes: Attach private remarks visible only to your team
• Active / Inactive Status: Deactivate contacts you no longer work with instead of removing them permanently
• Instant Search: Locate any contact in seconds by typing a name, email address, or phone number