Managing your clients

Clients are the people and businesses you invoice. Coffer keeps them in their own list so you can pick from a saved set when creating an invoice (rather than retyping the same details every time), and so per-client invoice numbering has somewhere to live. The Clients page is where you add, edit, and remove entries.

Adding a client

The Add client button at the top of the page opens a dialog with six fields. Only one is required:

• Name(required). How the client appears in your client list and on the invoice. Use the legal entity name if you're invoicing a registered company; use the individual's name for sole traders.
• Email(optional). Where invoices are sent from Coffer's Send dialog by default. Add or change it later from the Edit dialog.
• Address(optional). Printed under the “Billed to” block on the invoice PDF. IRD requires the recipient address on any tax invoice over $1,000 including GST, so this is worth filling in for most business clients.
• Notes (optional). A private free-text field for anything that helps you (payment quirks, contact person, preferred net terms). Never appears on the invoice.
• Invoice prefix (optional). Used when per-client invoice numbering is turned on in Settings. Leave blank to let Coffer auto-derive the prefix from the client name.
• Invoice number template (optional). Per-client override of the template syntax ({prefix}-{year}-{counter:3} and friends). Clear the field to inherit your account-wide default. Covered in detail in Invoice numbering templates.

Adding a client without leaving the invoice dialog

You don't have to come back to the Clients page every time. The Create invoice dialog (see Creating and managing invoices) has an inline “new client” affordance in its client picker: type a name, hit Add, and Coffer saves the new client and continues the invoice with them selected. The full set of optional fields (address, notes, prefix, template) can be filled in later by editing the client.

Editing a client

The pencil icon on each row opens the same dialog as Add, pre-filled with the current values. Save commits the changes; Cancel discards them. Edits don't retroactively touch invoices you've already raised for the client; the invoice PDFs were rendered with the values at the time of issue. Future invoices use the updated values.

Per-client invoice numbering

If you keep your invoices in a single numbered series across every client (the default), the Invoice prefix and template fields on the Client form don't do anything. They become live when you turn on per-client invoice numbering in Settings: from that point on, each client's invoices draw from their own counter and can use their own prefix.

Deleting a client

The delete icon prompts for confirmation. Coffer doesn't let you delete a client who has any invoices on file. This keeps your invoice records consistent: every invoice points at a real client. If you genuinely need to remove a client who has invoices, you'd need to delete the invoices first (which is itself blocked once a GST return covers them).

For clients you no longer work with but who have invoices you want to keep on file, just leave them in the list. They don't cost you anything to keep, and the historical record stays intact.

Your first client

A brand-new Coffer account starts with no clients. The page shows an empty state with a prompt to add one. The fastest path: just hit Add client, fill in a name, save. Address, email, notes, and per-client numbering can wait until they earn their place.