A customer record can land in your account four ways. Pick the one that fits the moment.
Four ways a customer gets created
| Method | When to use it | What happens automatically |
|---|---|---|
| From an inbound call | A new caller you don't recognize. Click Add customer on the call panel. | Phone pre-fills; you fill in the rest. |
| By hand | Office workflow, walk-up, or commercial setup. Customers → + New customer. | Nothing — you control every field. |
| From booking | Customer fills the public booking form or the AI Receptionist takes the call. | lead_status: Lead, source: "website" (or the receptionist's configured source). Existing phone matches attach to the existing record instead of duplicating. |
| From a tech in the field | Tech at a property for someone not in the system (e.g. a referral they walked into). Mobile app's + Customer action. | Record syncs on next reconnect if offline. |
Manual entry — the fields
When creating by hand, fill in:
| Field | Required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| First + last name (or company name) | ✅ | Commercial customers use company name |
| Phone | One of phone/email | Mobile preferred — used for ETA texts and payment link |
| One of phone/email | Used for invoice and estimate emails | |
| Billing address | Optional at create | USPS-validated; you can add later from the Properties tab |
| Source | Recommended | Pick a preset (Referral, Website, Repeat customer) or type your own ("Google Local", "Referral - Smith"). Drives lead-source reporting. |
| Lead status | Defaults to Lead | Use Customer for walk-ups already paying you today |
Required fields
You can save with just name + phone or email. Address is optional at creation; you can add it later from the Properties tab. Most shops require address before they'll book the first job — that's a workflow rule, not a Run a Call constraint.
Avoiding duplicates
Run a Call deduplicates by phone number at booking time. Two customers with the same name but different phones are kept separate; two with the same phone are merged at the booking step.
If you spot duplicates later, the cleanest fix today is to mark the duplicate as Inactive and use the canonical record going forward. There's no in-app merge action — talk to support if you need true record consolidation.
Importing a list
Bringing dozens or hundreds of customers from your old software? Email your customer CSV to admin@runacall.com — we'll import it for you, free of charge. You don't have to massage the columns; we'll figure out the mapping.