# Introduction - Customers

A customer is who you ship to, and the record that carries their addresses, terms and order history.

**Video coming soon:** What a customer record holds, and why the warehouse cares about a different half of it from accounts.

In Inventory a customer matters mostly for one reason: they are the destination. Every sales order, package and shipment resolves to an address that lives here, so an address entered once is an address the warehouse can trust.

![The Customers screen in Inventory and its Customer action. The list carries UK trade accounts including Cotswold Industrial Supplies Ltd, Poole Bay Marine Works Ltd, Chiltern Quarry Products Ltd, Peterborough Food Machinery Ltd, Thameside Fabrication Ltd and Severn Valley Plant Hire, each with contact details and an active status.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/inventory/customers/customers-list.png)

*The trade accounts you ship to. One record, shared with every app in the suite.*

## Two addresses, and they are often different

- **Billing address** (where the invoice goes): Head office, or an accounts payable department that has never seen a pallet.
- **Shipping address** (where the goods go): The site, the depot, the yard. This is what prints on the packing slip and what the carrier is given.

A customer can hold several shipping addresses, which is the normal case for anybody with more than one site. The order chooses which one, so getting them onto the record beforehand saves the warehouse a phone call.

## What the record tells you

![A customer record showing the account's details and contact information, with panels for their addresses and terms and a list of the documents raised against them, and an activity panel at the right.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/inventory/customers/customer-detail.png)

*Everything raised for this account in one place, which is what makes it the fastest answer to what is already committed.*

- Their open sales orders, and therefore what stock is already reserved for them.
- What has shipped and what is still sitting as a package.
- Their payment terms, which decide whether a new order should go out at all.
- A rate list, if they are on contract pricing.

> **Note:**
>
> **One customer, every app**
>
> A customer created here is the same record in Finance and in Repairs, not a copy. Their delivery address and their outstanding balance are two views of one contact, which is why an address corrected in Inventory is corrected everywhere.

> **Tip:**
>
> **Check open orders before promising stock**
>
> Availability is stock on hand minus what open orders have already committed. A customer with three open orders has already claimed units the item list still shows you holding.