Clients and saved items

Adding a client

From Clients, or straight from the invoice editor — type a name into “Who's it for?” and pick New client, which saves a trip to another screen in the middle of writing an invoice.

The form asks one question. Add contact details unfolds the rest when you need them:

Email and phone — for sending the document and chasing it.
Address — printed on the invoice, and required on a tax invoice in many places.
Tax ID — their VAT number, GSTIN or equivalent, where the rules want both parties' numbers on the document.
Reference — your own code for them, if you have one.

Why the form is so short

An eleven-field form in front of somebody trying to send one invoice is how an app gets abandoned on its first use. Everything is still there; it just is not in the way. Anything a client already carries opens showing, so nothing is hidden once it exists.

One client's whole file

Tap a name in Clients and you get what they owe, how to reach them, and every document filed under them — drafts, invoices, quotes and credit notes, reading exactly as they do on the main list. It is the screen to open before you ring somebody about money.

Importing a list

Settings → Import clients from CSV. Export a CSV from whatever you used before, then match the columns.

Column names are matched explicitly, from a list of the names other apps actually use. Nothing is guessed by similarity.
A row with no name is skipped rather than imported as a blank client.
Quoted fields, embedded commas and line breaks inside a field are all handled — the decoder is the pair of the exporter, so a file Billkeep wrote reads back perfectly.

If a column is not recognised it is left alone rather than being dropped into the nearest-looking field. A phone number in the tax ID box is worse than a missing phone number.

Saved items

Settings → Saved items. Anything you bill for repeatedly: a call-out fee, an hourly rate, a product, a standard package.

Each one holds:

A description — what appears on the invoice line.
A unit price.
A unit, if it has one — hours, days, items.
A default tax rate or group, if it always carries the same one.

On a line, pick a saved item and the three fields fill themselves. You can still change any of them afterwards — the item is a starting point, not a lock. Changing the saved item later does not touch invoices already written from it, which is what a price rise means.

Removing things

Clients, saved items, payment methods, tax rates and groups can be taken out of use. Every one of those asks first, and the dialogue says what survives: documents already finished keep their own frozen copy, so removing a rate never changes an invoice that used it.

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