Customer Lifecycle

The customer lifecycle starts when a team creates or imports a billing contact. It continues when invoices, projects, communications, notes, tasks, and files add context. Eigenn does not have a functional active, inactive, or archived customer state. Lifecycle management depends on the record itself and on the financial objects that link to it.

Lifecycle at a Glance

1. Create a Team-Scoped Record

A customer record needs:

• A name with a minimum of two characters in the customer form
• A valid primary email

All other visible fields are optional. Owners and Members of the active team can create customers. Viewers have read-only access.

You can create a customer from:

• Customers → Create customer
• The empty customer-ledger action
• The customer selection when you create or change an invoice

When you create a customer from an invoice, Eigenn selects the new customer in that invoice after it saves the record.

The form does not enforce unique names or email addresses. Search the customer ledger before you create a record, so that financial history does not split across duplicates.

2. Build the Billing Identity

The customer form separates general contact details from billing details.

General

• Name
• Primary email
• Billing email
• Phone
• Website
• Contact person

The billing email is one more address that gets invoices. Keep the primary email correct even when finance messages go to a separate mailbox.

When the primary email uses a company domain and the website is empty, the form suggests that domain for the website. The form does not suggest common personal-email domains. Eigenn saves the website without the http:// or https:// prefix.

Details

• Searchable address and manual address lines
• Country, city, state or province, and postal code
• Tags
• Tax ID or VAT number
• General internal note

When you select a suggested address, Eigenn fills the available city, state, country, country code, and postal code. Review every field before you save. An address suggestion can still need correction.

Eigenn stores the complete set of selected tags. When you remove a tag in the form and save the update, Eigenn removes that tag from this customer.

3. Connect Financial Work

Invoices and Tracker projects reference the customer by ID. The customer ledger then derives:

• Invoice and project counts
• Paid revenue
• Outstanding and overdue amounts
• Last activity
• Engagement score
• Customer-level invoice history
• Monthly invoice-value chart
• Estimated MRR and ARR from paid invoices
• Payment-health signals when there is enough history

The customer record does not own the invoice lifecycle. Change invoice status, record payments, send reminders, or reconcile balances from the invoice and receivables workspaces.

4. Add Relationship Context

The full customer record stores these kinds of team context:

• Notes for permanent internal decisions and relationship details
• Tasks for customer-specific follow-up, with To do, In progress, and Done states
• Files for contracts and other customer documents
• Emails for recorded collection communications
• Activity for customer-related events

Eigenn deletes a note or a task immediately when you select its list-level Delete action. Customer files have a confirmation step. You manage invoice files through their invoice.

5. Review and Correct the Record

Select Edit on the full customer page or in the customer actions. The submit button stays disabled until the form has a valid change.

After you save, confirm:

• The name, primary email, and billing email
• The contact and address fields
• The country and country code, especially when you filter by country
• Tag membership
• The tax or VAT number
• The related invoice and project counts

When you change a customer, Eigenn does not rewrite historical invoices. Open the related invoice if the snapshot that the customer sees also needs correction. Do the same for its delivery details.

6. Organize Without a Status Field

The customer table shows Active for every row. The bulk Status operation does not store Active, Inactive, or Archived values.

Use an explicit team convention instead:

• Tags for lifecycle groups, for example former-customer, do-not-chase, or renewal-review
• Tasks for a necessary next action
• Notes for the reason and the decision owner
• The paid and unpaid tabs for billing state
• The recent and repeat tabs for relationship pattern

Do not use the visible status menu as proof of an archived customer. Confirm the tag or note that represents your convention.

7. Delete With the Correct Expectations

Customer deletion is permanent and has no restore flow.

What Eigenn removes

• The customer record and its customer access token
• Tag associations
• Customer notes and tasks
• Customer-uploaded file records
• Customer contacts and communication preferences
• Linked Tracker projects
• Payment-method references
• Payment-health and aging records that cascade with the customer

What can remain

• Invoices remain, but Eigenn sets their customer link to empty
• Collection cases and promises can remain with an empty customer link
• Activity entries that Eigenn keeps in general team history can remain
• The customer-delete action does not do physical storage cleanup for customer files

Delete individual customer files first when storage removal matters. Then review invoices and operational cases before you delete the customer record.

Safer deletion paths

The full customer page and edit sheet ask for confirmation. Bulk deletion also confirms the action.

The customer-table row menu deletes immediately. Use the full page when you need to review consequences first.

Access Boundaries

• The active team is the boundary for all customer reads and writes.
• Owners and Members can create customers, change them, tag them, change their country, and delete them.
• Viewers can read customer data but cannot change it.
• A customer ID from a different team returns no record. You cannot change or delete it from the current team.
• Bulk actions affect only customer IDs that belong to the active team.

Common Lifecycle Mistakes

A duplicate record

Search by name, email, contact, and address before you create a record. If duplicates already exist, Eigenn has no merge control. Select the record to keep. Copy the necessary context into it by hand before you delete the other record.

An open invoice counted as collected revenue

The full record's financial total includes unpaid and overdue invoices. Confirm the invoice statuses and the payment records.

Reliance on Active, Inactive, or Archived

Eigenn does not store those status choices. Use a tag and a note until the lifecycle field is available.

Deletion of a customer to hide it

Deletion is not a filter or an archive. It removes operational context and clears customer links on retained invoices. Use a lifecycle tag when the record must remain available for history.

The assumption that the customer record owns every file

The Files tab includes customer uploads and invoice files. Customer deletion does not replace invoice retention or storage policies.

Related Pages

• Customers
• Customer Records
• Create and Manage Customers
• Review a Customer Finance Record
• Invoices
• Teams and Organizations