Customers and suppliers
How Xero contacts become Smartworks customers and suppliers, and what Smartworks adds or sends back.
Your customers and suppliers are Xero contacts. Smartworks reads them from Xero and keeps a copy for up to 2 hours. It adds a few things of its own, such as hiding a customer, extra contacts and addresses, and travel details. Two things go back to Xero: a new customer created from the job form, and notes you add on the Customers screen.
What comes from Xero
Smartworks reads every active contact in your Xero organisation. Archived contacts are left out. From each contact it takes the name, first name, email address, phone, mobile and fax numbers, contact persons and addresses.
- Customers. Every active contact appears in customer lists, including contacts you only buy from. Hide the ones you do not work for in Connector customers.
- Suppliers. A contact appears as a supplier when Xero marks it as one, or when you tick Available for POs in Connector suppliers.
The copy is kept for 2 hours and then reloaded with only the contacts changed in Xero. See The Xero connection and cached data.
What Smartworks keeps itself
Smartworks never stores a full copy of a contact in its database. It keeps these details beside the Xero contact, matched by the contact’s Xero ID:
| Kept in Smartworks | Set where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hidden? for a customer | Connector customers | Hides a contact in Smartworks without archiving it in Xero. |
| Hidden and Available for POs for a supplier | Connector suppliers | Hides a supplier, or offers a contact on purchase orders. |
| Contacts added with Add Contact | Customers | Extra people for the customer, with their email and phone. |
| Addresses added with Add Address or Create New Address | Customers screen or job form | Site addresses that are not on the Xero contact. |
| Travel Product and Travel Quantity on an address | Customers screen | The travel charge for that address, on Xero addresses and your own. |
Addresses that come from Xero cannot be edited in Smartworks. Only your own addresses show the Edit Address and Delete Address icons.
What Smartworks sends to Xero
A new customer from the job form
Choose Create New Customer in the job form’s customer list and fill in New Customer - Name, New Customer - Phone, New Customer - Email and New Customer - Contact Name. The mobile app’s new job form asks for the same details. When you save the job, Smartworks first creates the contact in Xero with the name, contact name, email and phone, then saves the job against it.
The address you enter with Create New Address is saved in Smartworks only. It is not added to the Xero contact.
Notes
The Notes section on the Customers screen is the contact’s history in Xero. Save adds the note to the contact in Xero, and the list shows the notes Xero holds for that contact.
What you change where
| To change | Do it in |
|---|---|
| A contact’s name, email, phones or Xero addresses | Xero |
| Whether a contact is a supplier in Xero | Xero |
| Hidden customers and suppliers, Available for POs | Smartworks |
| Extra contacts, your own addresses, travel details | Smartworks |
After a change in Xero, click Update beside Customers & Suppliers in Xero Data Sets to see it straight away.
Limitations
- A contact changed or added in Xero can take up to 2 hours to appear in lists, unless you click Update.
- An address entered with Create New Address, contacts added with Add Contact, and travel details stay in Smartworks. They are not copied to the Xero contact.
- Smartworks creates the new customer in Xero before it saves the job. If saving the job then fails, the contact is already in Xero. Choose it from the customer list rather than creating it again.
- A full load reads at most 10,000 contacts from Xero.
See also
- Customers - the screen that brings these details together.
- Connector customers - hide customers you do not work for.
- Create a job - where a new customer can be created.
- The Xero connection and cached data - when the contact list reloads.