Customers, credits and referrals

This tab is your buyer list. It is also where you add a customer by hand, fix their details, hand out credits, spend them, and see who sent a friend your way.

Go to Plugins, then Commerce. Click the Customers tab.

The list

The date buttons at the top work on Customer since. The list opens on All time, because a customer list is a roster, not a report.

Column	What it shows
Email	The address they bought with. This is who they are.
Name	Their name, when they gave you one.
Customer since	The day their record was made.
Orders	How many orders they have paid for.
Lifetime value	What they have spent with you in total.
Last order	The day they last bought.
Project credits	Project credits they have left.
Plan credits	Plan credits they have left.
Subscription	Active when they are on a plan right now.
Referrals	How many friends they have sent you.

Click a column heading to sort by it. Settings, then Display, hides any column you never look at. See Reports and the dashboard.

Above the list is a box reading Search email, name or referral code…. All three work. For an email address, type the start of it.

Adding a customer

Most customers add themselves, the first time they pay. You can also add one by hand, such as a regular who has not bought online yet.

1. Click New customer, beside the search box.
2. Type their Email. This is the only box you must fill in.
3. Fill in Name, Phone and the Address, if you have them.
4. The last box is the country, as two letters, such as US.
5. Click Create customer.

A message reads “Customer” and their email, then “created.”

Nothing is made in Stripe until they first pay.

When they later buy with that email, the order joins this record. Nothing is made twice.

There is no way to delete a customer. Their orders and credits point at the record, so it stays. Fix it with Edit instead.

Opening a customer

Click a row. ← Back to customers takes you back.

Six tiles sit at the top: Orders, Lifetime value, Last order, Project credits, Plan credits and People referred.

Identity holds their Email, Name, Phone, Customer since, their Stripe customer reference and their Referral code. Their Address shows here too, when there is one.

Credits holds two panels, Project Credits and Plan Credits. Each shows the balance, what was earned and what was spent. Under them, Ledger is the full history of both.

Subscriptions lists any plan they are on. Click one to open it on the Subscriptions tab.

Recent orders lists their newest orders. Click one to open it in Orders. You can also check several and use the bar that appears, the same as on the Orders tab.

Editing a customer

Click Edit, beside Identity. The same boxes open, filled in.

Change what you need, then click Save customer. A message reads “Customer updated.”

The customer sees their name, phone and address on their own account page. Change them here and they change there too.

A customer can also be added from Plugins, then Accounts. See Accounts.

Two kinds of credit

A credit is something a customer has paid for in advance. There are two kinds, and they never mix.

Project credits are units of work you owe. Five lawn cuts. One site change. One candle refill. It is work, not money. You spend them by hand, as you do the work.

Plan credits each cover one billing period of the customer’s plan. When their plan next renews, one plan credit is spent by itself, and they pay nothing that time.

Project credits

There are three ways a customer gets project credits.

• They buy a product or a plan that comes with them. Set that on the product. See Products and Plans.
• You hand them some here.
• On a plan with credits, more come each time the plan renews.

A bundle is just a product with credits on it. Say Pine and Wick Candle Co. sells a “Six refills” product with six credits. Dana Ruiz buys two of them. Dana gets twelve credits the moment the order is paid.

Plan credits

There are two ways a customer gets plan credits.

• You hand them some here. A free month to say sorry, for example.
• They refer a friend, and your reward is set to pay plan credits. See Referrals.

One plan credit covers one billing period of the customer’s current plan. It is used on their next renewal bill by itself. The ? beside the panel says the same.

You never spend a plan credit by hand, except to fix a mistake.

Granting and using credits

Each panel shows the balance, then “Earned” and “Spent”. Under that are two small forms. The one with Grant credits adds to the balance. The one with Use credits takes some away.

1. Pick the right panel: Project Credits or Plan Credits.
2. Type a number in Credits.
3. Write a line in Note (required).
4. Click Grant credits or Use credits.
5. Read the confirm box, then click OK.

A message tells you the new balance.

A note is required both ways, and the form will not go without one. Write something the customer can read. “Two refills, Birch Lane job” is useful. “Adjustment” tells them nothing.

You can move up to 10,000 credits at a time. A note can run to 500 characters.

The ledger

Ledger lists every change ever made to both kinds of credit. It has six columns: Date, Type, Change, Reason, By and Note. Type says which kind of credit it was.

A plus means credits went in. A minus means they came out. Nothing is ever removed from this list.

Referrals

Referrals reward a customer for bringing you a new one.

Every customer who has paid you gets a six-character code. So does anyone who signs in to their account. You cannot pick it, and it never changes. It leaves out letters and numbers people misread, so it survives being read down a phone.

The code is on their record here, under Referral code. The customer finds the same code on their own account page, under Your referral code, with a Copy link button next to it.

Paying people who are not your customers to send you buyers is a different thing. See Affiliates.

How it works for the friend

The friend types the code at checkout, into the Discount or referral code box, and clicks Apply.

The share link is quicker. It is your web address, then /shop?ref_code=, then the code. The friend’s browser can remember it for 30 days, and fills it in at checkout. That only happens if they say yes to cookies. If they do not, they can still type the code.

The friend gets the discount code you picked in Referral discount code. That code keeps its own rules, such as its dates. With no code picked, checkout says the referral is recorded, and the price stays the same.

A code that does not exist is refused, not ignored. Nobody pays full price expecting a discount.

Two more rules:

• A customer cannot use their own code. Checkout says “That’s your own referral code. Share it with somebody else.”
• Each new customer can use a referral code once. A code works for any number of new customers.

How it works for the referrer

The reward waits until the friend has really paid, so a free trial or a refund never pays out.

The friend bought	The reward comes
A monthly plan	After a set number of paid bills. It starts at 1.
A yearly plan	A set number of days after the first payment. It starts at 30.
A one-time order	A set number of days after they paid. It starts at 30.

If the friend’s order is fully refunded, or their plan is canceled, before then, there is no reward.

Two settings say what the reward is. One pays money onto their Stripe balance, which comes off their next bill. The other pays plan credits. You can use one, both, or neither.

The reward only reaches a referrer who has paid you before. Somebody who has never bought anything gets nothing, even if their friend buys.

Both set to zero is a real choice. Referrals are still counted, the friend still gets the discount, and nobody is paid.

All of these are on the Referrals & affiliates settings tab. See Commerce settings.

On their account page, the referrer sees how many people used their code, and what each one earned them. They never see who.