Creating Customers

Creating customers within Shofront allows for various functions, such as account sales, loyalty, promotions, customer history and price lists.

Note: Before creating customers, you may wish to set up customer groups such as loyalty customers and account customers. This article also provides information about creating customer groups.

To create your customers, follow the steps below. If you have a sales key icon created, you can also create customers from the register:

1. Select the Menu icon

2. Select Customer Management 

3. Select Customers

4. To create a new customer, select the Add Customer icon in the top left corner of the screen.

5. Please fill in the customer's name either using the creation wizard or selecting skip to create the customer from the form.

6. You'll need to select the appropriate customer group to ensure the customer has the desired functions.

7. Once you have completed filling in the relevant details for your customer, select Save Customer.

Note: You can tailor the Customer Creation Wizard so that your team is only entering the information you require. Here's an article about how to Customise the Creation Wizard.

Creating Customer Groups

Customer Groups are literally the grouping of your Customers. Grouping Customers can be useful for reporting, allowing certain Customers to use special features (like putting sales on account), and providing special pricing to Customers.

To create a customer group, follow the steps below.

1. Select the Menu

2. Select Customer Management

3. Select Customer Groups

4. Select the Add Customer Group button
   

5. Fill in the applicable fields on the edit page

6. Select Save to finalise

Customer Group Fields

How to Add a Customer to the Current Sale

The customer can be added to the sale at any point, either before, after or during scanning products. You can search for the customer using the standard search, which is how you normally search for products within the sell screen, or you can select + Add Customer. 

Add a Customer

With the Search Bar

You can add a customer the same way you would add products by description. Type the name of the customer and select the correct account from the limited search results.

With the +Add Customer

Click the designated key and search for the customer in the following text box. Click on the customer you wish to apply to the sale.

From here you will also be presented with the option to create a new customer by clicking the + Create New button. This opens a pop-up with the customer creation wizard, which will take you through the process step by step. When finalised / cancelled you will be taken back to the sell screen with the newly created customer applied to the sale. 

Remove a Customer from the Current Sale

You can remove the added customer account from a sale by clicking on the x to the right of the customer's name.

Emailing Receipts to Customers

Shopfront supports sending emails directly to customers straight from the sell screen, it can also be setup to automatically email to certain customers and templates can be completely customised.

Setting up Your Email Receipt Templates

Email receipts are a specific type of receipt template designed to be viewed on modern email clients. Shopfront has a default email template that you'll likely want to customise to your needs or you might want to create a new one.

Receipt templates can be found by performing the following:

1. Select the Menu icon

2. Select Setup

3. Select Receipts

An unlimited number of receipt templates can be created, but there can only be one default email template per store (however these can be overridden by customer group settings).

If you're creating a new template, make sure you select Email Receipt as the type.

For more information on receipt templates and the available functionality (such as adding a PDF attachment of an A4 invoice to the email), check out our dedicated help article.

Changing the Default Email Receipt Template

If you've created a new template, you may need to modify the email template to use, this can be done by performing the following:

1. Select the Menu icon

2. Select Setup

3. Select General

4. Change to the Outlet tab

5. Select the Outlet you wish to customise

6. Find the Email Receipt Template option under General

7. Select the template you wish to use

8. Select Save

Modifying Your Shopfront Reply to Email Address

By default, Shopfront will use a generic "no reply" email address however you might want to customise this to use your email address instead, email addresses are set on an Outlet level so each store can have a unique address.

1. Open the Menu

2. Select Setup

3. Select General

4. Switch the tab to Outlets

5. Select the Outlet you wish to modify

6. Enter the email address to use in the Outlet Email field under General

7. Select Save

Note: Emails are still sent using our generic "no reply" email, however it'll set the industry standard Reply-To field as the email you specify, causing all emails to be returned to your email address.

Customising Email Settings for Customer Groups

Receipt templates and a number of other functions relating to emails can be overridden for certain customers by modifying their customer group.

Each customer group can be edited by performing the following:

1. Select the Menu icon

2. Expand Customer Management

3. Select Customer Groups

4. Find the group you wish to modify

5. Press the Edit button next to the group

On this screen you can modify the Email Template (leaving it blank will use the Outlet's default template) and whether or not to automatically email receipts to customers within the group.

For in-depth information about customer groups, have a look at our help article.

Emailing a Receipt From the Sell Screen

After a sale is completed, the receipt will be displayed on the screen, allowing you to Print and Email receipts.

Note: If you've set up a customer group to automatically email receipts, you don't need to do anything.

You can email receipts to any customer, regardless of whether they are already in your system. To send an email after a sale, simply follow these steps:

1. Select Email

2. Enter the recipient's email address

3. Select Send

Emailing a Receipt From Sales History

1. Navigate via Menu > Register > Sales History and use the (advanced) filters to find a sale. 

2. Expand sale's details by clicking on the sale

3. Email the receipt by clicking the Email Receipt button and entering an email address in the following pop-up

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Email a Receipt from Parked Sales

1. Email or print receipts for parked sales via the sales screen key Parked Sales at the bottom of your sales screen

2. Expand sale's details by clicking on the sale

3. Email the receipt by clicking the Email Receipt button and entering an email address in the following pop-up

Note: Emails out of Shopfront are queued so they may take several minutes to arrive depending on the customer's email host.

Assigning a Customer to a Previous Sale

You can assign a customer to a previous sale. This is handy if you forget to select a customer while processing a sale.

To assign customer to a previous sale:

1. Open the Menu

2. Select Register

3. Select Sales History

4. Select the sale you wish to assign a customer to

5. Select Assign Customer

6. Search for the customer by typing into the text box and select the relevant name from the drop down list

7. Click Assign

Once assigned, loyalty points are added to applicable customers and the customer's history will be updated to include all the sale details.

Creating and Editing Price Lists

Pricelists allow you to apply a separate price for chosen products to customer groups or to individual customers who aren't assigned to a group.

How to Create a Price List

1. Navigate to Menu > Customer Management > Price Lists 

2. Click + Add Price List

3. Name your Price List, e.g. Cricket Club Prices

4. Click New to create the list

5. Set pricing rules for All Categories, Add a Fallback Rule or search individual products or classifications

6. Set your pricing rule for each added item

7. Click Save to finalise

How to Edit Price Lists

Once Price Lists have been created you can modify the settings at any point. The below are your setting options. Please note, however, that depending on the type of item added, some actions might not be available. For example, price override will be available when you add individual products or families, but not for brands or tags. 

Note: Setting a cost + % price set does not mean that the GP% of the sale will be the same as the cost +%. See Profitability Display for the calculation used for calculating GP%.

Applying a Price List to a Customer Group

You can assign a Price List to a group of customers that are to receive the same pricing. This will save you time if a change needs to be made in the future since the whole group is receiving the same price list prices. 

1. Navigate to Menu > Customer Management > Customer Groups

2. Find the customer group by typing into the search bar

3. Press Edit

4. Scroll to the Special Pricing section

5. Select a Price List from the dropdown menu

6. Press Save to finalise

Apply a Price List to a Customer

You can also assign specific discounts to individual customers. This works for both customers within groups and those without. If a customer is in a group you will need to enable the option to override that group. If this has not been enabled, the special pricing tab will not be available for that customer and the group settings will apply. 

1. Navigate to Menu > Customer Management > Customers

2. Find the customer by typing into the search bar

3. Press Edit

4. If the customer is part of a group enable Override Customer Group

5. Scroll to the Special Pricing section

6. Select a Price List from the dropdown menu

7. Press Save to finalise

Merging customers

Shopfront allows you to merge customers. This is a handy function in case of a duplicate customer being created. Shopfront will merge their sales, loyalty points and any balance owing. You will be able to merge two or more customers into one and have the ability to choose the customer details of the newly merged customer.

Please Note: There is no way to reverse the process once the customers have been merged. 

To merge customers, please follow the steps below. 

1. Open the Menu

2. Select Customer Management

3. Select Customers

4. Select Merge Customers

You will now be in the Customer Merge Page. To add customers to Merge.

1.  Press + to add a customer.

2. Search the customer 

3. Press Add

Follow the steps above to add the other customers you wish to merge. 

Once all of the customers have been added, you can now start selecting the customer details you wish to keep for your new merged customer. You can add the customer details in various ways either by

• Typing the new information in the Results Column

• Selecting a section you wish to keep from a particular customer by selecting Select Section.

• Selecting each value from one of the customers you wish to keep.

You will be able to review the customer's detailed information for the new merged customer under the Results column. 

To merge the customers select Complete, you will be greeted with a confirmation and a list of your customers being merged.

Press Continue to complete the process.

Exporting Customer Details

Shopfront can export any details you have filled out in your customer management to a CSV file.

To export customer details, follow the steps below.

1. Open the Menu

2. Select Customer Management

3. Select Customers

4. In the top right hand corner of the page click on Functions to expand further options

5. Select Export Customers

6. Choose from the options detailed on the following pop-up box (see screenshot below)

• Simple is limited to: Name, Company, Code, Birthday, Email Addresses, Phone Numbers

• Full includes all details you have entered for your customers (including current total loyalty points and current owing amounts)

Allow Marketing Emails

On the customer edit page, there is a setting for each customer called Allow Marketing Emails. This setting helps identify customer preferences when exporting details, especially if you use a third-party marketing system.

The available options and corresponding CSV values are listed in the table below:

Note; exporting this report to Excel will enable you to modify which columns to include and what details to show on this report. 

Importing Customers

Customers can be imported into Shopfront using a CSV file.

Note: This will create a new customer and cannot be used to import information into already existing customers.

Follow the steps below to import customers with a CSV file:

1. Select the Menu icon

2. Select Customer Management

3. Select Customers

4. Located in the top right hand corner select the icon Functions

5. Select Import Customers

6. Choose the file containing the customers you wish to import

7. Select Import 

Your CSV file can contain the following columns:

• Column order does not matter.

• Columns are case sensitive.

• Any columns present that aren't listed above will be ignored.

Commonly Asked Questions

I've got allow higher prices enabled for my Price List, my customer is attached to the sale and I'm using price override, but my price isn't activating

Make sure you have a price point created for the single, even if you're only selling cases, six-packs, etc to the customer it prevents issues with the price calculation.

For example, if you have a regular sell price for 1 @ $4, 6 @ $20 and 24 @ $60 and want to sell the 6 pack at $25 for this customer, make sure you also set a single price (in this example, you might set it to something like $5).

I have an active Price List with a Cost+% price for a product but the cost isn't applying the way I expect it to

When Live Profit is active on the Sell Screen, the displayed cost includes any rebates that may be applied by active promotions. When calculating the sell price, Price Lists do not incorporate the promotional rebates into the calculations.

For example, let's consider a scenario where a product with a cost price of $5 is being sold. Suppose there's a promotion applied, setting the promotional price at $6 with a rebate of $2. Additionally, there's an active Price List applied to the sale, set as Cost+0% (equivalent to the cost price). In this case, while the Live Profit on the Sell Screen will show $3 due to the promotional rebate, the sell price determined from the Price List will remain at $5.

How do I add a customer as a sales key?

The register can be customised to suit your needs using Sales Keys. Sales Keys are the large buttons seen on the sell screen, they can be customised to provide a large variety of functions. Frequent customers can be added as a sales key to quickly add the customer to a sale by completing the following steps:  

1. Open Menu 

2. Select Setup

3. Select Sales Keys

4. Click Edit to the right of the key folder you wish to add the key to

5. Add a key and set it up following the guides on Sales Keys

6. Apply the action 'Add Customer to the Sale'

7. Search for the customer by typing into the text box and selecting the right name from the dropdown list

8. Click Save to finalise

For further information on Sales Keys please refer to the following articles Sales Keys & Adding Product to Sales Keys

Can I create customers from the sell screen?

Shopfront allows you to create a new customer account from the sell screen. You can choose to either use the + Add Customer button or the designated sales key in More Functions. Either option will open a pop-out version of the creation wizard and edit page also found in Customer Management.  

The + Add Customer button to the top right of your sell screen allows you to add a customer to a current sale. If a customer already exists, you can search for them by name. Alternatively, this section allows you to quickly create a new account. 

1. Click + Add Customer

2. Click + Create New

3. Either follow the creation wizard 

4. Or skip the wizard and add details on edit page

5. Click Save to finalise

Once the customer is created, they will automatically be added to the sale. 

Create a Customer Sales Key

Alternatively, you can create a new account via the sales key labelled Create Customer. This is one of our default sales keys located under More Functions. 

1. Click More Functions

2. Click Create Customer

3. Either follow the creation wizard 

4. Or skip the wizard and add details on edit page

5. Click Save to finalise

Once the customer is created it will be added to your sale. 

Note; Please see our article on Sales Keys for further details.