Adding a customer

Everything in Flyra hangs off a customer. Jobs, estimates, invoices, subscriptions and messages all attach to one, so this is the first record you'll create and the one you'll create most often.

One short form, about forty seconds.

1. Start a new customer

From the Customers page, click Create your first customer, or New Customer if you already have some.

A panel slides in from the right titled Create New Customer.

2 to 5. Who they are

2. First Name is the only genuinely required field. Everything else can be filled in later.

3. Last Name is optional, but skip it at your peril. Three customers called Mike with no surnames is a search problem you build for yourself.

4. Email is where estimates and invoices are sent. Without it you can't email them anything, so you'd be back to reading an invoice number down the phone.

5. Phone is where texts, appointment reminders and review requests go. For most home service businesses this matters more than email, because texts get read.

6. Service address

Starts autocompleting as soon as you type. Pick a suggestion and the city, state and ZIP fill themselves in.

This is the address that lands on the Map, that route planning measures from, and that your technician navigates to. If it's the billing address rather than where the work happens, your routes will be wrong and someone will drive across town for nothing.

Press Escape to dismiss the suggestion list if you'd rather type it by hand.

7 to 10. Address detail

7. Unit / Apt is optional and matters for apartments and commercial suites.

8. City, 9. State and 10. ZIP normally fill themselves from the autocomplete. Check them anyway, especially if you typed the address manually.

11. Notes

The most under-used field on this form. Anything the technician needs to know before they arrive goes here: gate codes, where to park, which dog bites, whether the customer works nights and hates morning slots.

Notes travel with the customer to every future job. Five seconds now saves a phone call from a driveway later.

12. Create Customer

Click Create Customer at the bottom. Cancel discards the lot.

They appear in the list straight away.

Tips and gotchas

• Service address, not billing address. This one drives the map and your routes.

• Always get the mobile number. Reminders and review requests are texts. No number, no automation.

• Notes are for the person doing the work. Gate codes and parking beat "nice customer".

• Only the first name is required, which makes it easy to create half a record in a hurry. It's still worth thirty more seconds.

Next up: The customer record