Managing booking customers

Churches can easily manage all their bookings contacts using the Customers area in the Bookings module. When assigning a contact to a booking, the contact search will match against both your Address Book contacts and those organisations and individuals on your Customers list; ideal for churches that have internal and external resource users.

Add a customer

Adding or importing Customers in the Bookings module works in exactly the same way as adding or importing contacts in the Address Book.

To add a new customer click "Add customer" and complete the various fields of contact information. Save the changes when you are finished and before navigating away from the page.

You can also add new customers at the point of adding the booking. Using the contact search, begin to type your customer name, to make sure they're not already on the system. If no existing customers or contacts are matched, the "Add customer" option at the bottom of the list can be used.

A pop-up "Add customer" window is displayed and contact details can be completed.

Importing existing customers

Churches can easily import customers; perhaps if migrating from a previous bookings management system. From the Customers page, click "Import customers".

The "Import customers" page (see next screenshot) provides helpful guidance on how to present your data - a CSV file with each field of information in its own column, and a column heading that describes the field. The column heading is used by ChurchSuite to correctly map each field in your CSV file with the corresponding field in the Customers table in the Bookings module.

The "Import customers" page also includes an example CSV file that you can download and view, and a full list of fields that can be imported is shown. Not every field is required - you don't have to have a column in your CSV file for every field - ChurchSuite will only import those fields which you supply in your CSV file; however you must ensure every incoming field that you supply in your data is assigned to a ChurchSuite field (otherwise it won't be imported).

Follow the on-screen instructions to choose your CSV file and import (upload) it.

After upload, the first five records of your uploaded CSV file are displayed (see next screenshot). The first column shown is the column heading in your CSV file. The "Import As" column shows you which field your data is going to be mapped to in ChurchSuite when the import is completed. At this stage you can manually change any field mappings that are incorrect. Warnings, designated by a yellow warning triangle, indicate a field in your CSV file that ChurchSuite doesn't know what to map to. Simply select the correct field from the drop-down "Import As" list, or leave it marked as "Do not import" if that field is not required.

When you are satisfied all of your CSV fields are correctly mapped, click "Import All Records" at the bottom of the page (or Cancel if you need to make changes to your CSV file and restart the import process later).

Import Errors Report

All imports display a summary of the records imported. If any errors are detected, an error report is included, as follows

Column name	Comment
Row	The row number in the CSV file
Name	Name of person, if applicable
Child (symbol)	Indicates this person is a child
Field	Column name for error
Error	Brief description of the error detected
Data	Contents of the field in error

Clear Errors - If any errors are detected the report will continue to be displayed until the 'Clear Errors' button (at the top right) is clicked and confirmation that the errors are to be deleted.

TIP - always start the first columns of the import file with first name and last name. This will assist in displaying the name of the person, if an error is detected

Archiving a customer

Once you have added or imported customers, the Customers list provides a number of helpful features on the action cog on the right-hand side of the page, making it easy to perform common tasks like duplicating, archiving or deleting customers. Note that the customer list below is showing "Active" customers. You can toggle the 'View' to switch to "Archived" customers. You can also use the search box and Advanced Search feature to filter the customer list if you wish.

Archiving a customer does not affect existing bookings against which that customer may have already been assigned; however an archived customer cannot be assigned to new bookings. An archived customer can be set active again.

At this company

Customers are automatically grouped together by Company, so when viewing a customer's contact profile page, you'll see other customers "At this company", including any archived customer contacts.

Deleting a customer

Deleting a customer will remove them from all past and future bookings and is not reversible.

Filtering customer bookings

When viewing a customer's contact page, as well as seeing the customer's basic contact information, you can also filter and view past and future bookings, filter by status, and click through to see the resources booked for those bookings.

Continuing down the customer page is the Charges table - toggle between viewing unpaid or paid charges for the customer.

Adding notes

Users can add Notes against customers, perhaps to record information such as agreed terms, discounts, special needs etc. As with Notes elsewhere in ChurchSuite, you can restrict the visibility of notes and pin/unpin notes in the list.

Communicating with customers

You can communicate with your customer directly from the Customer's page. From the "Communicate" drop-down button at the top of the page (see above screenshot). The message 'compose' window has the usual options to select Preset emails and SMS messages, merge field personalisation, branded templates and message scheduling. All 'sent' communications are added to the communication log at the bottom of the customer profile page in the "Recent Activity" section, and can also be viewed in the Booking module > Reports > Communication report.

The Bookings module includes the Communication menu and functionality as other modules, enabling users to easily communicate with active (not archived) booking customers.

Search by customer name or company name - the list will filter as you type...

...or type company: to filter a list of companies. Selecting a company from the list will add all customers for that company to the communication list...

...or type all: to select all active customers for all companies.

Once you have selected which customers you wish to communicate with, you can then apply further filters and select how to communicate e.g. email, sms, CSV export etc.

Customer reporting

There are a number of helpful customer-related reports provided in the Bookings module reports section - ideal for filtering and reporting against all your customers, perhaps to view past communications or customer notes.