For agencies🏢 Agency Management

Manage customers, locations, and contacts

Build and maintain your customer directory, each with its own billing defaults, job locations, and onsite contacts.

Customers are the billing organizations you serve. Each customer gets its own management page covering billing, locations, contacts, requestors, and rates.

Watch the walkthrough

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Billing defaults, locations and contacts, kept in one place. · Open in a new tab

Step by step

  1. 1Go to Agency, open the Operations page, and select the Customers tab to see your searchable directory.
  2. 2Click "+ Add Customer" to open the slide-over, then enter the organization name, notes, billing defaults (address, invoice email, terms, billing frequency, cancellation window), any onsite contacts, and required qualification tags.
  3. 3Optionally enter a base billing rate so a rate schedule is created up front; saving creates the customer plus a "Default" billing group and takes you to its Manage page.
  4. 4On an existing customer, click "Manage" to open the detail page, which has tabs for Billing, Locations, Requestors, Documents, Info, Billing Rates, Notifications, and (for managers) Portal.
  5. 5Open the Locations tab to add reusable job sites with a structured address; these are used as the assignment location and to estimate travel time.
  6. 6Within a location, use its onsite-contacts editor to add point-of-contact people who help an interpreter on arrival.
  7. 7Same place listed more than once (an import often brings a hospital in several ways)? Tick the box on each copy, click "Merge N into one…", pick the one that should stay, and click "Merge". Upcoming jobs and saved job templates at the others move to the one you keep, their onsite contacts and notes are copied onto it, and the others are deactivated.
  8. 8Edit the organization's details (name, job code, notes, cancellation window, minimum billed time, required qualifications) on the Info tab, and where invoices go on the Billing tab; when a customer stops working with you, use Deactivate to retire it.
  9. 9To tidy up several customers at once, such as old ones that QuickBooks brought in, pick "Never used on a job" or "From QuickBooks, never used" from the Show menu above the list. Tick the customers you want, or the box at the top to select every one shown, then click "Deactivate selected".
  10. 10Imported each office of one organization as its own customer? Tick them (searching for their shared invoice email and selecting every one shown is quickest), then click "Combine into…" and pick the customer they belong to. Each one becomes a billing group of that customer (see the merge duplicate customers article for the details).

Tips

  • The Notifications tab controls which update emails a customer gets (cancellations, reschedules, interpreter changes); all are OFF by default, so turn on the ones a customer wants. Booking receipts and “who’s covering” confirmations are separate, and you send those by hand per job (see “Send receipts and confirmations to customers”).
  • A customer can carry its own minimum billed time, which overrides your agency default for that customer's jobs (an assignment-level minimum still beats it); the editor warns you when it's below your agency default.
  • To stop billing one customer for mileage, untick "Bill mileage" on their Info tab and save. Their invoices then carry no mileage line, interpreters are still reimbursed for their miles, and jobs already audited keep the mileage they were audited with. It can only turn mileage off: if your agency does not bill mileage to customers, no customer is billed for it.
  • Deactivating a customer is a soft delete, it is hidden from the directory but not erased, so historical jobs and invoices stay intact.
  • Deactivating a customer also releases its QuickBooks link, so that QuickBooks customer can be linked to a different record. It also won't be imported as a new customer again: the Customer Sync tab marks it as one you deactivated in OneTerp. A customer deactivated before this change may come back on the next import; deactivate it again and it stays gone.
  • When some of your customers look like duplicates, a banner above the list says how many. Click "Review" to sort them out (see the merge duplicate customers article).
  • If a customer still has open or un-invoiced jobs, Deactivate warns you and says how many. You can still go ahead: the customer is hidden, and those jobs, locations, requestors and billing groups stay as they are. "Deactivate selected" is stricter: it skips any customer with open or un-invoiced jobs and tells you how many it skipped.
  • Retired locations are deactivated, not deleted, and drop out of the pickable list automatically.
  • Once a customer has four or more locations, a "Search locations by name, address or notes" box appears above the list. The Billing tab gets "Search billing groups by name" the same way. Every word you type has to match, in any order. Locations you ticked stay selected when a search hides them, and the merge bar says how many are hidden but still included.
  • Deactivated a location by mistake, or merged the wrong one? Click "Show deactivated locations" under the list. Each one says "Deactivated" or "Merged into" the location it went into, and "Reactivate" brings it back. Jobs a merge moved stay on the location you kept.
  • A location merge never changes past jobs, and upcoming jobs keep the address they were booked with, so an interpreter's job card does not change under them. Each moved job's history shows the location change. Editing a location's address is different: that does update its booked jobs.
  • Merging locations needs Customers and Coordinate access at the Manage level. Reactivating needs either one.
  • Editing a customer's name, a billing group, a location, a requestor or an onsite contact also updates the jobs already booked with it, past and upcoming, as long as they are not invoiced yet. The confirmation says how many jobs changed. Invoiced jobs keep what they were billed under, and a detail someone typed by hand on one job is left alone.
  • When a location's address changes, interpreters holding an upcoming job there get a notice that the location has been updated. Past jobs update quietly.
  • Updating booked jobs needs Coordinate or Billing access at the Manage level. Without it, the record still saves and the confirmation says the jobs already booked keep the old details. If the update fails partway, click "Update them now" to finish it.
  • A required tag with a "$" beside it prices a rate differential or a flat charge. On a customer that is a standing decision: the tag is added to every job you book for them from then on, so it charges indefinitely.

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