3.3. Working with clients
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3.3. Working with clients

3.3.1. About clients

You need clients to record everything you do for them, billable or not. Clients have the following properties:

  • Name: The name of the client.

  • Registration

    • Legal Name: The legal name of the business.

      If a client has a long legal name, you can enter a short name in the Name field (e.g. Coca Cola) and the full name in the Legal Name field (The Coca-Cola Company). The name is used to display the client in the application and the legal name can be displayed on invoices.

    • Business Number: The number assigned to the business when it was registered. Some users need to display this number on their invoices.

    • Tax Number: The tax number assigned by the government to your client's business. In many countries, invoices must include the client's VAT number. In such cases, the tax number is the VAT number.

    • Other Number: A generic field that could be used to record the trade register number.

    • Code: A code that is useful if you want to number invoices automatically and to include it in the invoice number. For instance, if your client name is Acme Corporation and their code is ACME then their invoices could be numbered like this: ACME-001, ACME-002, etc.

  • Contact

    • Attention

    • Address, City, State, Zip

    • Phone, Fax, Mobile, Other

    • Email, Website

  • Notes: Additional notes.

  • Active: Whether the client is active or not.

  • Billable: Whether the client is billable or not. If a client is marked as billable, it has a few more fields that define the default billing settings.

    • Terms: Payment terms used by default for invoices created for the client.

    • Tax exempt: Whether taxes are applied to invoices created for the client.

    • Region: Needed if the client is foreign.

Clients can be managed in the Projects view. Here's how to create, edit or delete a client.

  • To create a new client, go to Business » New Client or click the New Client button from the toolbar.

  • To edit a client, right-click it (control-click on Mac OS X) and select Edit Client from the popup menu.

  • To delete a client, right-click it (control-click on Mac OS X) and select Delete Client from the popup menu.

You can also create a client whenever you're creating a project by using the New link next to the Client field.

3.3.2. Hiding inactive clients

If you don't work anymore with a client, you should not delete it. Instead edit it and mark it as inactive. Inactive clients are displayed in gray instead of black.

Then, click the small gears button below the clients list and select Active. Fanurio will display only active clients and hide inactive ones.

3.3.3. Billing clients

Clients can be billable or non-billable. If you don't need to create invoices for a client, you should edit it and mark it as non-billable.

  • If a client is non-billable, it can only manage non-billable projects. You can't create invoices for non-billable clients.

    A non-billable client can always be changed to billable.

  • If a client is billable, its projects are billable by default but you can mark them as non-billable if needed.

    A billable client cannot be changed to non-billable if it has been invoiced or if it has billable projects with at least one product. If a billable client is changed from billable to non-billable, all its projects, tasks, expenses and trips are changed to non-billable.

If a client is billable, you can specify default billing settings for its invoices and projects. These settings are used by default when a new invoice or project is created for that client.

Let's suppose you have two clients, client A and client B. Client A's work is quick and easy but client B's work is unclear and it takes many emails to determine what they are looking for. That's why for client A you don't need to round time while for client B you need to round it up to 15 minutes to cover for the overhead. Once you make these billing settings at client level, all the projects you create for the client will use the same settings. If you decide to change these settings at client level, existing projects will not be altered.

3.3.4. Billing foreign clients

Some businesses work with both domestic and foreign clients. Foreign clients may want invoices in their own currency with numbers displayed according to the rules of their country. For instance, some countries use comma as decimal separator while others use a dot. Dates may also be formatted differently. Some countries display the month first while others display the day of month.

Fanurio lets you specify if a client is domestic or foreign. If clients are foreign, you can also specify the client's country so that when invoices will be created for them, numbers, dates and currency will be formatted correctly.

Here's how to mark a client as foreign:

  1. Go to the Projects view

  2. Right-click the client and select Edit Client

  3. Go to the Billing tab, check the "This is a foreign client..." option and then select a locale to indicate the country

Let's say that you are from Scotland and most of your clients are from the UK but you also have a few clients from the USA. When dealing with clients from UK, you will be invoicing in GBP while for the American clients the invoices will be in USD. By marking a client as being from the USA, all its invoices will show numbers, dates and currency formatted using American rules.

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3.2. Configuring your business  Home  3.4. Working with projects