Customer Lifecycle

Understand how customer records are created, enriched, used, retained, and permanently deleted.

The customer lifecycle begins when a team creates or imports a billing contact and continues as invoices, projects, communications, notes, tasks, and files add context. Canvas does not currently provide a working active, inactive, or archived customer state, so lifecycle management depends on the record itself and the financial objects connected to it.

Lifecycle at a Glance

Stage	What changes
Create	A team-scoped customer ID and access token are created, and a customer-created activity is recorded
Enrich	Contact, address, tax, tags, notes, tasks, files, and payment context are added
Transact	Invoices and Tracker projects reference the customer
Review	Revenue, outstanding balance, payment health, engagement, and communication history are derived from related records
Maintain	The team corrects details, changes tags, and closes follow-up work
Delete	The customer record is permanently removed; some related records cascade away while invoices survive without the customer link

1. Create a Team-Scoped Record

A customer requires:

a name with at least two characters in the customer form
a valid primary email

All other visible fields are optional. Creation is allowed for Owners and Members of the active team; Viewers have read-only access.

Customers can be created from:

Customers → Create customer
the empty customer-ledger action
customer selection while creating or editing an invoice

When created from an invoice, the new customer is automatically selected in that invoice after the record is saved.

The form does not enforce unique names or email addresses. Search the customer ledger before creation to avoid splitting financial history 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 an additional invoice recipient address. Keep the primary email accurate 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 as the website. Common personal-email domains are excluded from this suggestion. The saved website is normalized 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

Selecting a suggested address fills the available city, state, country, country code, and postal code. Review every field before saving; address suggestions can still require correction.

Tags are stored as the complete selected set. Removing a tag in the form removes its association with this customer when the update is saved.

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 sufficient history exists

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 several kinds of team context:

Notes for durable 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

Notes and tasks are removed immediately when their list-level Delete action is selected. Customer files have a confirmation step. Invoice files remain managed through their invoice.

5. Review and Correct the Record

Choose Edit from the full customer page or customer actions. The submit button remains disabled until the form has a valid change.

After saving, verify:

the name, primary email, and billing email
contact and address fields
country and country code, especially if country filtering matters
tag membership
tax or VAT number
related invoice and project counts

Editing a customer does not rewrite historical invoices. Open the relevant invoice if its customer-facing snapshot or delivery details also need correction.

6. Organize Without a Status Field

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

Use an explicit team convention instead:

tags for lifecycle groupings such as former-customer, do-not-chase, or renewal-review
tasks for a required next action
notes for the reason and decision owner
paid and unpaid tabs for billing state
recent and repeat tabs for relationship pattern

Do not tell the team that a customer has been archived based on the visible status menu. Verify the tag or note that represents your convention.

7. Delete With the Correct Expectations

Customer deletion is permanent and has no restore flow.

What is removed

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 their customer link is set to empty
collection cases and promises can remain with an empty customer link
activity entries stored as general team history can remain
physical storage cleanup for customer files is not performed by the customer-delete action itself

Delete individual customer files first when storage removal matters. Then review invoices and operational cases before deleting 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

All customer reads and writes use the active team as the boundary.
Owners and Members can create, edit, tag, update country, and delete customers.
Viewers can read customer data but cannot change it.
A customer ID from a different team returns no record and cannot be updated or deleted from the current team.
Bulk actions affect only customer IDs that belong to the active team.

Common Lifecycle Mistakes

Creating a duplicate

Search by name, email, contact, and address before creation. If duplicates already exist, there is no merge control; choose the record to keep and manually preserve the required context before deleting the other.

Treating an open invoice as collected revenue

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

Relying on Active, Inactive, or Archived

Those status choices are not persisted. Use a tag and note until the lifecycle field is available.

Deleting a customer to hide it

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

Assuming 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.