Manage your customers (list, email consent, export)

Customers in the menu is the list of everyone who has booked with you, plus anyone you added by hand.

One thing explains most surprises on this page: a customer is identified by their email address. There is one customer record per email address per account, shared by all your locations, and every new booking with that email rewrites the record with whatever was typed in the booking form. The last section, "Why a customer's details changed by themselves", explains it in full — worth reading before you spend time tidying customer data.

The customer list

Each row shows Name, Email, Phone Number and Email consent (Yes or No). If your account has memberships switched on, you also get Member, Applies to and Discount; on accounts without memberships those three columns are simply not there.

Search with the Search for customers box. It matches name, email, phone number and the Yes / No of Email consent — nothing else. A street name, city or country finds nothing, because the address fields are not searched.
Sort — click a column heading. The list starts sorted by Name.
Click a row, or the gear icon (View and edit details) at the end of the row, to open the customer.
Open in a new tab — every row is a real link: Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac), middle-click, or right-click and choose your browser's "Open in new tab"; on a phone, long-press the card. You can select an email address in the list to copy it without opening the customer. Go back on a customer opened in a new tab takes you to the Customers list.

The page loads the whole customer list up front and searches it in your browser, so on a very large account it can take a moment to open but searching is instant.

Your search, the member chips, the sorting, the page and the page size are kept in the page address. Coming back from a customer (with Go back or the browser's Back button) brings the list back as you left it, a reload keeps it, and you can bookmark or share the link. Choosing Customers in the menu opens the list fresh.

Filter members with the chips

On membership accounts a row of chips labelled Member: sits above the table: All, Active, Expired, Deactivated and No.

Each chip shows how many customers you would get by picking it, counted after your search.
You can light several chips at once; the list then shows customers matching any of them. All clears the selection.
A chip with nothing behind it is greyed out and moved to the end of the row.

In the Member column, an active member shows a green Yes with Until {date}; Expired shows the end date; Deactivated reads "Manually deactivated". Applies to is All locations or the location names the membership covers, and Discount is the member discount. Managing the memberships themselves is covered in the memberships guide.

Email consent shows whether the customer ticked the newsletter box in the booking form ("I agree to receive newsletters and offers from" followed by your location's name). It is No unless they ticked it.

You cannot change consent in the admin: the customer form has no consent field. The value is updated only when the same email books again — and it is then set to whatever that booking said, so a customer who ticked the box once and not the next time goes back to No.

Partner users: several accounts in one list

If you are a partner user managing customer accounts, the list has an extra Company Name column and a View for all accounts switch. With it on you see the customers of every account you manage; with it off, only the account you are signed in to. Creating a customer then also asks you to pick the account (Select Account).

What is stored on a customer

Open a customer and you see one form:

Customer ID and Created — read-only.
First name, Last name, Email, Phone Number — required.
Address, Zip Code, City, Country — optional.

Phone Number has a country dial-code picker and must be a possible phone number for that country. Country is a searchable country list — type a few letters and pick; "No matching country" means the spelling did not match any country.

That is the whole record: there is no notes field, no tags, no lifetime spend and no booking count. Email consent is shown in the list and the export but not on the form (see above).

Created is not "customer since". It is rewritten every time the customer makes a new booking, so it usually shows their most recent booking rather than their first.

Where Country comes from

When a customer books, Country is what they chose in the booking form's country field (if you ask for it). If they left it empty, the booking widget fills it in from the country of their phone number. So most customers get a country even when you do not show the field. The nationality chart on the dashboard is worked out from the booking's phone number, not from this field (see the guide on reports and exports).

Add a customer by hand

Open Customers.
Press Add new customer.
Fill in at least First name, Last name, Email and Phone Number.
Press Save. You get New customer created!

Under the email field it says "Each email can only belong to one customer." If the email is already used by another customer on the account you get Another customer on this account already uses this email. and nothing is saved.

Edit a customer

Open the customer from the list.
Change the fields you need.
Press Save in the bar at the top. You get Customer updated!

Two things happen quietly when you save, and neither asks for confirmation:

Changing the name rewrites the name on all of that customer's bookings. Old bookings show the new spelling. That is usually what you want when fixing a typo, and not what you want if you are reusing a record for a different person.
Changing the email moves their memberships to the new address, so a member keeps the discount when they book with the new email. On membership accounts the email field reminds you: "Member discounts apply when this customer books using this email address."

The new email must not belong to another customer on the account — you get the same Another customer on this account already uses this email. message.

Phone Number is required by this form even though bookings can create customers without one. If an older customer has no phone number, fill one in before you can save any other change.

See a customer's bookings: Order History

Scroll down on the customer to Order History. It lists every booking tied to that customer, across all your locations and all dates, with Created, Order type (Booking or Membership), Order No, Start, End, Lock, Channel, Value, Payment Status, Status, Location and Printed. Lock shows the lock number(s) each booking used, and a Test chip next to the status marks a test booking (see the guide on finding and filtering bookings).

Click a row to open that booking, or Ctrl-click (Cmd-click) or middle-click it to open the booking in a new tab.
Prolong rows and Include membership purchases control whether extensions and membership purchases are listed as their own rows. They are the same switches as on the Bookings list.
Tick rows to enable Export and Print for just those bookings — they work exactly as on the Bookings list (see the guide on finding and filtering bookings). The heading checkbox ticks the bookings on the current page; Select all {count} in the line above the list ticks all of the customer's bookings, and Clear unticks them. Extension rows are left out when you tick in bulk.

This is also the way to find a booking by the customer's email or phone number, which the Bookings search does not cover.

If the customer has a membership, a Membership details card appears above the history with Location, Added via, Discount, Valid until and Status, where you can edit, switch off or delete the membership (see the memberships guide).

Bookings made without an email address are not attached to any customer and never appear here.

Book for a customer

Open the customer.
Make sure the location you want to book at is picked in the Location picker at the top of the left menu.
Press Book for customer in the bar at the top of the customer page.

The booking window opens over the admin with the customer's name, email, phone, address, country and newsletter consent already filled in. Finish the booking as usual (the guide on editing, moving or cancelling a booking covers admin bookings and payment).

If it does not open, the message tells you why:

Select a location in the bar before booking for a customer. — pick a location in the Location picker in the left menu first.
The booking plugin is not loaded. On a small screen, open the menu first, then try again. — on a phone or narrow window, open the menu once, then press the button again.
We could not get your session token. Refresh the page and sign in again. — reload the admin and sign in.

Export customers to a CSV file (Excel)

Tick the customers you want. The heading checkbox (Select all on a phone) ticks everything that matches your current search and chips — the easy way to export "everything I can see". On a phone, open Options and switch on Select customers by tapping first.
Press Export. The button shows how many are selected, for example Export (12), and is greyed out until you tick at least one.

You get a file called customers.csv with these columns: ID, First name, Last name, Email, Phone number, then Member, Coverage and Discount on membership accounts, then Address, Zip code, City, Country and Consent To Email. Country holds a two-letter country code (for example se); older customers can have a country name instead. The column headings and the Yes/No values are always in English, whatever language you use the admin in.

To send a newsletter only to customers who agreed to it, open the file in Excel and filter Consent To Email on Yes.

On a phone

The list becomes cards under the heading Customers, with Options (the member chips, Select customers by tapping and Export) and Sort (Asc / Desc, then Name or Email) next to the heading.

Delete a customer

Use the bin icon (Delete) on the row in the list, then confirm Delete customer? — "Are you sure you want to delete this customer?" — with Delete customer. There is no delete button inside the customer page.

What it does and does not do:

It removes the customer record only. Their bookings are untouched, and each booking keeps its own copy of the name, email and phone typed at the time. Deleting a customer is therefore not a way to erase someone from the system.
Their memberships are not deleted with them; remove those on the memberships page if needed.
It cannot be undone, and there is no archive.
If the person books again with the same email, a new customer record is created.

Who can do what

Everyone with access to customers can see the list, open customers and export. Adding and saving customers needs permission to manage customers: account owners, members and Booking staff have it. Viewers see the form greyed out, without a Save button and no Add new customer. The bin icon only appears for users allowed to delete customers, which Booking staff are not: they can create and edit customers, but not delete them.

Why a customer's details changed by themselves

This is what is behind reports of customer records being "overwritten".

When someone goes to checkout in the booking widget — or you make a booking for them from the admin — Rentalbuddy takes the email from the booking form, lower-cases it, and looks for a customer with that email on your account. Only the account and the email are compared: not the name, not the phone number, not the location.

Match found — the existing customer is updated with everything from that booking form: first name, last name, phone number, address, zip code, city, country, newsletter consent and the Created date.
No match — a new customer is created.

This happens when the checkout starts, so even a customer who then abandons the payment has updated (or created) their record.

What that means in practice:

Two people sharing one email become one customer. A couple, a family, a school or a company booking with the same address end up on the same record, showing the name and phone of whoever booked most recently. This cannot be configured away — the email is the identity.
Details you typed in by hand can be overwritten. If you add an address and the customer later books without entering one, the empty field from the booking wins and your address is gone.
Locations do not separate customers. One record per email for the whole account, shared by every location. The same email at another Rentalbuddy account is a different customer.
Your booking history is safe. Each booking keeps its own name, email and phone as typed, so Order History still shows who actually made each booking even when the customer header shows someone else's name.
There is no merge tool. If the same person booked with two different email addresses, they stay two customers and their bookings stay split.

What to do about it:

Treat the customer record as "the person who last booked with this email", not as a CRM entry you own.
If two people must be kept apart, they need two different email addresses.
If you fix a name or add an address, expect it to be replaced the next time that email books.
If you need a clean list for a mailing, export it soon after you tidy it rather than assuming the tidy-up sticks.

Common questions

The customer's name changed to someone else's — why? Someone else booked with the same email address, and every booking updates the customer record with what was typed. Each booking still keeps its own name.

Can I export my customer list to Excel? Yes. Tick the customers (the heading checkbox takes everything in the current search) and press Export to get customers.csv.

How do I see who agreed to receive newsletters? Look at the Email consent column, or export and filter Consent To Email on Yes.

Can I change a customer's email consent? No. It comes from the newsletter checkbox in the booking form and only changes when that email books again.

Several people book with the same email — can I keep them apart? No. One email is one customer; they need different email addresses to become separate customers.

How do I make a booking for a regular customer? Open the customer, pick the location in the Location picker in the left menu and press Book for customer; their details are filled in for you.

Where do I find all bookings of one customer? Open the customer and scroll to Order History — it covers all locations and dates.

I deleted a customer — are their bookings gone? No. Only the customer record is removed; the bookings stay, and a new record is created if they book again.

Can I open several customers in tabs? Yes. Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) or middle-click a row, or right-click it and open it in a new tab.

My search is still there when I come back to the list — why? The Customers list keeps your search, chips, sorting and page in the page address. Clear the search box, or choose Customers in the menu to start fresh.

Can Booking staff add or delete customers? They can add and edit customers, but not delete them: the bin icon is only shown to users allowed to delete customers, such as owners and members.

How do I tick all of a customer's bookings in Order History? Tick the heading checkbox to take the current page, then press Select all {count} in the line above the list to take every booking of that customer.