Adding your own fields to customers, invoices and payments

Custom fields let you keep your own information on a customer, an invoice or a payment: a job number, a renewal date, a purchase reference, a note on who paid. You define the boxes once and your team fills them in as they work.

Turn them on. Open Settings, then Account, then Custom fields. Only your account's Admin can do this. Custom fields start switched off, so nothing changes for anyone until you press Turn on. You can set your fields up first and turn them on when you are ready, and turning them off again deletes nothing.

Add a field. Choose a tab (Customer, Invoice or Payment), then Add field. Give it a label, choose a type (text, number, date, yes/no or a dropdown of choices), and decide whether it is Required. You can add help text and a default value. Tick Show to customer only for things your customer should see. The type and the key made from the label cannot be changed later, but you can rename the label, reorder fields and archive one you no longer need. You can have up to 25 fields of each kind.

Where they show up.

• On the Add and Edit forms for customers and invoices, and on the customer's page.
• On payments you take from a customer's page, at the register and, for fields marked Ask on pay page, on the pay page itself. Each payment's values are on its Transactions details page.
• On your Customers, Invoices and Transactions lists, as up to three columns of your choice, with a filter.
• In emails, with merge fields such as {{customer_key}}, {{invoice_key}} and {{payment_key}} (the email template editor lists them).
• In CSV files you import, and in software built on PayMidWare.

What your customer sees. Only fields marked Show to customer are printed on the invoice, the pay page, My account and receipts. A customer's fields are copied onto an invoice once, when it is sent, so editing the customer later does not change an invoice that was already sent.

Good to know. A required field must have a value when a record is created, but turning Required on never blocks records you already have. Never type a card or bank number into a custom field: a value that looks like a card number is refused. If your account is in a merchant group, the group's Admin may add fields for every location; you will see them marked Set by your group.