Customers are an essential part of any business. Keeping your Customer records up to date in Tailwind will make the running of your business, from Operations to Invoicing, a lot easier.

Navigate to the Customers list using the left navigation bar to create a new Customer record. Once there, click on the Create button above the list of records.
This will bring up an empty Customer record. Next, begin filling out the fields to create your new Customer. Fields marked with a red asterisk are mandatory. You can move between sections of the Customer information using the tabs along the top of the form: General, Physical Address, etc.

The ‘Internal Name’ is the name that will appear for the Customer throughout Tailwind, so make sure it is something everyone on your team will recognize.
The Sales and Account Rep fields are meant to indicate whoever in your organization is responsible for this particular Customer. Assigning a Sales or Account Rep to the customer record will allow the system to determine Automatic Payables in the case of commissioned sales or account representatives. These fields will be pulled from your Personnel list – so you may need to create a new Personnel record if they are not in the system yet. A new Location will automatically be created from the Customer's address.

Choose the appropriate Customer Type from the drop-down list. You will want to use ‘Merchant’ as the default type in most cases. Each type includes its own set of further details.
Note that a Customer set as a ‘Prospect’ will not be available when creating Orders; this type is useful for potential Customers or Customers who do not yet have credit approval.

Once you have filled out all the necessary fields, click the ‘Create’ button at the bottom of the screen to create the Customer record. While you could stop at this point, there are some more details you will probably want to add to most Customers.

Once you have created your new Customer, you will most likely want to add Contacts to the record. Contacts are specific people at the Customer’s company. These are the folks you talk to when negotiating a Quote or clarifying the details of an Order.
Click the ‘Add Contact’ button below the Contacts list to add a Contact. This will take you to the Contact Create screen, where you can fill out the relevant fields for your contact. Once all the information has been entered, click ‘Create’ to finish creating the Contact. This will return you to the Customer record.

The final step is to add Credit Information for your new Customer – without this information, you will not be able to create Orders for this customer.
At a minimum, you will want to set the Customer’s Credit Status. If they are approved for credit, you should include the terms and limitations of that credit – how much credit and the number of days you are willing to extend it to the Customer. Once that information is entered, check off the ‘Credit Agreement’ toggle.
If any additional credit checks have been completed, you can select them.
Click ‘Save’ to save the new credit information and return to the Credit view.

Your new Customer record is now complete! Now that you’ve created the Customer, you may want to send them a Quote or even create an Order to start moving a shipment on their behalf.