Clients

Your clients are the record everything else hangs off — jobs, proposals, invoices and every message you have sent. They belong to the business rather than to whoever added them, so everybody whose role includes Clients and leads sees the same list.

Add a client

Open Clients and choose to add one. The only thing required is a name; everything else can wait until you know it.

• Name — a person’s name, up to 200 characters.
• Business name — if you are working for a company rather than a household.
• Email and phone — how you reach them, and where an invoice or a proposal will go.
• Address — the property you will be working at.
• Notes — anything else worth knowing.

You can add a client from the middle of writing a proposal or booking a job, so you do not have to stop and set one up first.

Find a client

The search box on the Clients page matches on name, business name, email, phone or address, and the name or address of any of a client’s buildings, and it searches as you type. Typing part of a phone number finds the client whether or not you remember how it was formatted.

Alongside search there are two filters:

• Active, archived or all. Active is what you see by default.
• Source — where the client came from, which is recorded for every client. Any source is the default; choosing one shows how much of the list it is, 12 of 84.

The list is alphabetical and pages at 25 at a time, which you can change to 10, 50 or 100.

Keep a client’s details up to date

Open a client and edit any field. Changes are kept with the record of who made them and when.

A client’s page has four tabs, each the answer to one question:

• Overview — who they are: their contact details with their address, their locations once they have more than one, where they came from, getting in, and your notes.
• Work — what you have done for them: their jobs, proposals and invoices, newest first, then their visits that repeat, agreements, units, site measurements and documents.
• Financials — what they owe and are worth: how they pay, lifetime value, the time on their work and sales tax.
• Communication — what you have said: the whole history, texting consent, whether they are asked to pass you on, and one Links panel with the three links that are theirs.

A tab a role reads nothing on is not there.

Beyond the contact details, a client’s page carries:

• Getting in — the gate or door code, lockbox and alarm codes, pets, parking, whether to call before arriving, and notes for the crew. Written once rather than explained to each person you send, and never sent to the client (see Record how to get in).
• Where they came from — the lead source, so you can see later which kinds of marketing brought you work.
• Whether they are asked to pass you on — Allow post-job share prompts, on unless you turn it off. Off, they are sent neither the email asking them to share your page nor a review request after a job.
• Texting consent — marketing texts and service texts are answered separately, because agreeing to a reminder about tomorrow’s visit is not agreeing to be sold to. It is the client’s own phone’s; a contact’s phone has its own (see Add the people to reach).
• Sales tax — whether they are tax-exempt, with why, the certificate’s number and when it expires. Their new invoices carry no sales tax while it holds (see Sales tax). Marking a client exempt is for whoever sets your sales tax rates: you, a Bookkeeper, or a role of your own that changes Pay and accounting settings.

Keep a client with several buildings

A property manager with twenty buildings, a restaurant group with six kitchens, a landlord: one client, with a location for each address. You bill and talk to one account, and still know which building is which.

Every client starts with one location, its main one — the client’s own address and getting-in details. A client with only that one looks as it always has, with Add a location beside Edit in its contact details.

Add a location asks for:

• Name — Building C, Downtown kitchen. Every location but the main one needs a name, up to 80 characters; the main one can go by its address.
• Address — with address suggestions as you type, where your plan has them. A client can’t have two locations at the same address, however it is typed.
• Getting in and Notes — optional, the same boxes as the client’s own getting-in details.

Once a client has two, its Overview shows Locations: each one’s name and address, its open jobs, its units and its next visit, with the main one first and marked Main. Edit changes a location, and from there:

• Make main — that location becomes the main one, and the client’s address and getting-in details become its. Change the client’s address and its main location’s changes with it.
• Archive — for a building they no longer have. Any open jobs there are listed before you confirm. An archived location stays on the list marked Archived, with its history; the main location can’t be archived until another is made main.

A customer with many buildings is quicker brought in from a spreadsheet: Clients → Import locations takes a row per building — the client, its name and address, how to get in, and the site contact there — and checks every row before adding any (see Importing and exporting your data).

Suggested locations

Work you have already done at other addresses is offered under Suggested locations: each address on the client’s jobs, proposals, visits, units, agreements and site measurements that isn’t one of its locations, with how much work is there. Add as a location opens the form with that address filled in, and the work at it is counted under the new location. Not a location stops offering that address. Nothing is ever made a location without you choosing it, so an address typed two ways doesn’t become two buildings. A visit your client books from their hub somewhere else arrives here the same way, for you to confirm as one of their buildings (see Your client’s own page).

Put work at a building

Once a client has two locations, a new job, visit or proposal asks which one the work is at, and a new unit which building it is in. Location lists them, the main one first, and starts at the main one, or at the one whose address you have already typed. Picking one gives the work that building’s address, and a proposal’s job is put at the proposal’s building when it is accepted. Another address… brings back the address box for work somewhere else. A visit on a job starts at The job’s location, so a job’s visits go where the job is unless you say otherwise. A client with one location is asked nothing new: the address box is there as it always was.

What follows from the building the work is at:

• The crew sees that building’s getting-in details, on the job and on their own day, and never another building’s. Work at an address that is none of the client’s buildings shows none.
• The building’s name goes with the address — on the job, under the client on the Jobs list, on the Day Board and on the crew’s My Day card — and searching the Jobs list by a building’s name finds its jobs.
• Units are listed under their building on the client’s Work tab, and a visit shows the crew the units at its building. A site measured at a building’s address is listed under its name too.
• The Work tab narrows to one building. Location, at the top of the client’s Work tab, shows only the jobs, proposals and invoices at that building — an invoice by its job’s building — and its units and site measurements. Show all opens the list narrowed the same way, with Show every location to go back. Agreements and visits that repeat are listed whole.
• Sales tax is worked out from the building’s address.
• Correct a building’s address and the jobs and visits put at it go to the corrected address. Work from before the building was picked for it stays at the address it was typed with.

Every change to a location is in the client’s Change history. Locations are for whoever can see and change the client — every role that includes Clients and leads — on every plan. Somebody whose role books work but can’t see clients types the address, as before.

Add the people to reach

A client’s own email and phone are its main contact. When there is somebody else to reach — the accounts payable clerk, a building’s superintendent, the manager who signs — Add a contact, beside Edit in the client’s contact details, asks for:

• Name and Title — Accounts payable, Superintendent.
• Email and Phone — at least one, or there is no way to reach them.
• Roles — Billing contact, one per client: giving it to somebody takes it from whoever had it. Invoices, payment reminders, receipts and notices about a payment go to them by email, greeted by their name. Site contact at each of the client’s locations they look after; one person can be the site contact of several. A visit’s messages there go to them — the reminder, the notice that it is booked, moved or called off, the on-my-way and running-behind texts, and ready for pickup — and the crew’s Call button on the visit rings them, named.

The client’s Overview then shows Contacts: the main contact first, then each other with their title and roles, and Call and Email on each. A role nobody holds is the main contact’s, and the list shows it on them. Each building on the Locations list names its site contact.

Edit changes a contact; Remove takes them off. They stay in the client’s history, marked Removed, and any role they held goes back to the main contact.

A message for a role nobody holds, or for one whose holder can’t take it — a billing contact with no email — goes to the main contact, and the client’s Communication tab names the contact each message went to when it was not the main one. A visit at your own place is the main contact’s, and so is the answer to something the client asked for themselves, such as a booking made online. A text back from a contact’s phone is filed on the client’s work, as one from the client’s own phone is.

Choose who a document goes to

When you send a document yourself — an invoice, sent or sent again, or its reminder; a proposal; a change order; an agreement; a job summary; a photo report; a finished checklist — Send to offers the client’s contacts who have an email, beside the one it would go to: the billing contact for an invoice, the main contact for everything else. Choose another and it goes to them alone, greeted by their name, and the Communication tab names them. You can choose the client itself too, so an invoice can go to the main contact instead of the billing contact.

Send to appears only when there is somebody else to choose. A contact removed since you opened the page, or one with no email, is refused with nothing sent — it never goes to somebody else instead. A job summary sent to a contact is texted only to their own phone, never to the client’s beside it. An agreement’s link can go to a contact, but the code that proves who signs it still goes to the client’s own email or phone. Invoices sent in a batch, and anything an automation sends, go to the role’s own contact.

A contact’s email or phone can be another client’s contact’s too — one property manager for several owners. A contact’s phone is its own for texting: if it texts STOP, that phone gets no more texts, marked Texts stopped on the contact, and the client’s own consent is unchanged.

See their work

The Work tab lists their jobs, proposals and invoices, newest first — the latest five of each, with its number, title, status and, if your role includes Prices and costs, its amount. Each opens its own page, and Show all opens the whole list filtered to this client. A client with no work yet says so, with + Proposal and + Appointment beside it.

See their history from your old system

If you brought in your old system’s history (Your old system’s history), the client’s rows from it are on the Work tab under From your old system, after their work here: newest first, each with its kind, date, number, title, status and the amount it was recorded at. Filter it by kind, search it, and Show all past the first ten. A row opens to everything it carried — the columns your old system had that SMG Tools has no field for, too — and which file it came from. None of it is counted in any figure SMG Tools shows.

When the old history goes back further than the client has been in SMG Tools, the Overview says In your old system since and the day it starts.

You see the kinds your role sees of your own work: old jobs with jobs and the schedule, old invoices and payments with invoices and payments, old hours with people and pay — and the amounts only with prices and costs.

See what a client is worth

A client’s Financials tab adds up their work for you without you having to run a report:

• Time totals — the hours logged against their jobs, split into total, billable, invoiced and not yet invoiced, so you can see at a glance whether work is sitting unbilled.
• Lifetime value — what this client has been worth across everything they have ever bought.
• How they pay — how many days they usually take to pay and how many of their invoices they paid by the due date, and what they owe you now with the part that is late. Worth a look before the next job: a client who pays late is one to ask for a deposit. Anyone whose role includes Reports sees it — the owner, managers and bookkeepers; see Getting paid.

Their service agreements, if they are on one, and what those entitle them to, are on the Work tab.

Note work they will want later

The quote they want next spring, the panel that will need replacing next year: keep it on the client in Future work, on their Overview, so it comes back in its month instead of being forgotten by Tuesday.

Add future work takes what they will want (up to 300 characters), Raise it in — a month, or No date — and, for whoever sees prices and costs, roughly what it is worth. The panel lists the open items by month, each saying where it was noticed (on JOB-0142) and who noted it; quoted and dropped ones are below. A job’s notes end with what was noticed on it, as Future work noted: ….

• It comes due on the first day of its month, in For you, for whoever changes clients and leads. An item with no date never comes due; it waits on the client and in the list.
• Start a proposal opens a new proposal for the client with the words as its description. Once that proposal is saved, the item reads Quoted — P-0012 and leaves For you.
• Later asks for another month. Drop asks Why? — optional — and keeps the item, marked dropped.
• Clients → Future work lists every open item in the business by month, with what each is worth where you may see it, for filling a slow week.

The crew note it from a visit with Note future work — it goes to the office, and they see none of it afterwards — and the assistant takes it as said: “Note for Laura — a quote for the bedroom split next spring.”

Keep a to-do for a client

A client’s page has To-dos too, on its Overview: the client’s own, and every open to-do on their jobs, each naming its job. A job’s to-do is ticked there as anywhere. How to-dos work is under Keep a to-do on the job.

Look back at everything you have said

The client’s Communication tab carries their whole communication history in one thread — emails, texts, notes you sent them and their replies — so you never have to work out which conversation happened where before you call them back.

Its Links panel holds the three links that are theirs, each with Copy: the referral link they pass on, the request link they ask for more work with, and the client hub link to their own page, where they can see their jobs, documents and warranties with no account or password — the hub sends a code to the email or phone on their record first.

Track the equipment at their property

A client’s Work tab lists the units at their property — a furnace, a water heater, a rooftop unit — each with its make, model, serial number and its own service history. Recording a job against a unit is what builds that history, so next time anybody attends they can see what was done before.

Units due on the Clients page pulls together every unit across every client that is due for service, which is the list to work from when you are filling a quiet week.

Stop reminders to book

A client’s Communication tab says whether they get Reminders to book — the reminder when a unit is due, and work due again — and, once they stop them, when and how: from the link in one, from their mail app, or recorded by your team. One stop covers every reminder that asks for new work and nothing else: their invoices, visit reminders and messages about work they asked for still go. When a client asks you by phone, They asked to stop them records it; when they ask to hear again, They asked to be reminded again. Both are in the client’s history with who recorded them.

See who is due again

Some work comes back: the gutters every six months, the furnace every year, the pest service every quarter. Give a kind of work how often it usually comes back — on its settings under Organization → Job types, while Client Reminders is on — and every client who had it is due again that long after their last finished job of it. Usually comes back every takes weeks, up to 104, or months, up to 60, and is left blank for work that does not come back. A kind of work from a trade kit may have one already — gutter cleaning every six months, a furnace tune-up every twelve, general pest service every three — and you can change it or clear it.

Due again on the Clients page lists them once that date is inside the reminder window Units due uses — 30 days unless you change it; see Find the work that is due — overdue first: who — a business with its contact, Northgate Dental Group · Priya Raman — what, when it was last done, when it is due and when they were last reminded, with Book, which starts the job for them with the kind of work chosen. Skip this time takes a client off until their next due date. Not for this client stops it for that work for good, and keeps who decided.

A client leaves the list the moment the work is in hand — an open job or a booked visit of that kind, a repeat or a service agreement for it — and is never on it once archived. Their Work tab shows what they are due again for, and their client hub shows it as due around a date with Book it.

Remind them by email

Switch on Remind the client when work is due again — under Client Reminders on the Automations page — and each client is emailed in your name a set number of days before their work is due: fourteen unless you choose otherwise, from one to sixty, with Change beside it. Work of theirs due within the same week goes in the one email. Each kind of work has a button: your booking page with that service already chosen, or your request form with the work named where you do not book it online. Whatever they book or ask for from it is marked Reminder on the Leads page, so you can see what the reminders brought back.

Each client is reminded once per due date, and never while the work is in hand, after they stopped reminders to book, or when they have no email address. It is never texted. The email says it is a reminder from you about booking work and carries your postal address and a link to stop them — so it waits, sending nothing, until your address is on Business Details. When you first switch it on, every client already due is reminded the next morning, once.

Preview shows the email as one of your clients would get it — the client due soonest — in your wording, and Send a test to me sends exactly that to you, with [Test] before the subject. Adjust changes the subject and the message; {work} names the work and {client} the client.

Each reminder sent is on the client’s Communication tab, and Due again says when each client was last reminded. Below the list, The reminder shows, month by month, how many clients it reached and how much work was booked after one: a job of the work it named, made for that client within ninety days, whoever booked it. The same work is counted in What SMG Tools caught on the Billing page as Booked after a due-again reminder — after the reminder, never claimed as because of it.

Bring your clients in from somewhere else

If you are moving from another system, or from a spreadsheet, Import on the Clients page takes a file of clients, and Import units takes their equipment. Export gives you the list back out in the same shape at any time — your records stay yours. It exports the list as the page is showing it, search and filters included, so choose All first for every client.

Archive a client you no longer work for

Clients are archived, never deleted. Archive client is at the foot of their Overview tab. Archiving takes a client out of the active list and leaves everything attached to them exactly as it was: their jobs, their invoices, their history. While they are archived, nothing on their record can be changed — except an opt-out, such as a stop to texts or to reminders, which is always recorded — and no job or proposal can be made for them. Your notes, automations, campaigns, share prompts and due-again reminders are not sent to them, and their client hub link opens nothing. If they come back, find them under Archived and choose Restore client, and nothing has been lost.

This is deliberate. A deleted client would take a year of invoices and job records with them, and the one time anybody needs those is the one time they cannot be recovered.