Do I have to import my customers before I can send an invoice?

No. Pick any customer on a new invoice and FireDeck creates their billing record when you save. The import is there to bring a whole list over at once, not something you have to do first.

Can I import my customer list from an Excel file instead of a CSV?

Yes. Choose the file and click Import with AI — it reads customers out of .xlsx spreadsheets, PDFs and photos whatever the column layout is, picking up contacts, addresses, monthly fees and tax rates where the file has them. Re-save an old .xls as .xlsx first, and expect a long list to take a couple of minutes.

Will re-importing my customer list create duplicate customers?

Not if your file has an account_number column — rows whose account number matches update the customer you already have instead of adding a second one. A blank account number always creates a new customer, and the summary at the end counts what was created against what was updated.

Can I charge one customer a different labor rate than everyone else?

Yes. Set Labor rate ($/hr) on that customer in Edit customer and it fills in automatically every time you add a Labor line to their invoice. Leave it blank and they get your shop default, and it never overwrites a price you typed yourself.

How do I keep a customer out of automatic billing?

Turn on Auto-bill hold in Edit customer, with a hold reason if you want one on file. They drop out of bulk billing, the recurring sweep and the batch statement email, and you can still invoice them by hand.

Customers

Every customer you bill has a billing record: where invoices go, who receives them, what rate they pay, and their whole invoice history. Open the list from Billing → Invoicing, then click Customers in the row of links under the heading.

The customer record itself — name, service address, account number — lives under Field Service → Customers, shared with the field app. The billing list pulls from it, so someone you've never invoiced still appears here and gets a billing record the first time you bill them.

Find a customer

The search bar has a field selector on its left. Leave it on All fields to search name, account number, email, phone, and location at once, or narrow it to one of those. Click Search — one match opens that customer straight away, several open a list to pick from. Click any row to open the account.

Read a customer's account

The account page opens with tiles for Lifetime sales, Collected, Outstanding, Overdue, Account age, and Invoices, plus Available credit when they hold unapplied credit memos. Billing details below shows their addresses, monthly fee, sales tax, and notes; Billing history lists every invoice with its status and balance. Statement and Edit customer sit at the top right — statements are covered in Invoicing.

Set the billing address and delivery

Click Edit customer.
Fill in Billing address — Street and City, State ZIP. Leave it blank and invoices go to the service address; the dialog shows you which address that is.
Set Invoice delivery to Email or Mail (print & mail). This drives the batch draft send: a mail-only customer is left as a draft to print. You can still email any single invoice yourself.
Fill in State and County if you use jurisdiction tax rates.

Add contacts

Contacts sit at the bottom of the same dialog. Click Add, enter Name, Role (General, Billing, Site, Accounts Payable, or Other), Email, and Phone, and turn on Receives invoice emails if invoices should go to them. The star button makes a contact the Billing default.

Invoices go to the contact marked Gets invoices, then the billing default, then the customer's own email address.

Override your shop rates for one customer

All of these sit in the Edit customer dialog, and all mean "use the shop default" when left blank:

Labor rate ($/hr) — this customer's negotiated rate. It fills in automatically when you add a Labor line to their invoice, and never overwrites a price you already typed.
Monthly fee — a recurring charge such as monitoring. It's reference only and doesn't bill itself; use a recurring contract for that.
Tax rate — a percent that overrides everything else for this customer. Blank falls back to a matching jurisdiction rate, then your shop default.
Tax Exempt — no sales tax at all on their invoices.
Auto-bill hold — keeps them out of bulk billing and the recurring sweep, with an optional Hold reason. You can still bill them by hand.

Tag customers

Tags are colored labels for grouping accounts — apartments, annual test, slow payers.

On the Customers list, click Manage tags. Type a name, pick one of ten colors, click Add. Rename and recolor inline; deleting a tag removes it from every customer.
On a customer's account, click Add tags (or Edit tags) next to their name, toggle the tags you want, and click Apply.
Back on the list, click any chip under Filter by tag to show only those accounts; chips stack.

Import your customer list

Click Import in the row of links under the Invoices heading. There are two cards: Customers and Open invoices (A/R).

For a clean CSV, use the column list shown on the card — name is the only required one; the rest cover email, phone, contact name, service and billing addresses, monthly_fee, tax_rate, tax_exempt, and notes. Choose your file and click Import.

If your file isn't in that shape, choose it anyway and click Import with AI. It reads customers out of an Excel file (.xlsx), a PDF, a photo, or a differently laid-out spreadsheet, picking up contacts, billing versus service addresses, monthly fees, tax rates, and notes where the file has them. A long list is read in chunks and can take a couple of minutes, with a progress toast counting it down. Re-save old-format .xls files as .xlsx first.

Include the account_number column and matching rows update the customer you already have instead of creating a second one — that's how you enrich existing records by re-importing a better spreadsheet. A blank account number creates a new customer. When it finishes you get a count of created, updated, skipped, and errored rows, with the reason for anything that failed.

Leads

Leads are prospects who reached out but aren't customers yet — the answering service saves them automatically with a note of what they asked and when. Open Leads in the same row of links.

The tabs are Active, Won, and Lost, with a search box for name, phone, or email. Click a lead to edit their name, phone, email, and status (New, Working, Proposal sent, Lost) and add notes as you chase the job.

Click Convert to customer to turn a lead into a customer account with its own account number. You usually don't have to: when a lead's proposal is approved or scheduled in the field app, they convert automatically, and the lead page then links straight to the new account.