Customers who have moved away or stopped coming clutter up searches. Archiving takes them out of the main list while keeping every booking and invoice they ever had.
Steps
- Open the customer.
- Use the archive option on their page.
- Confirm.
What archiving does and does not do
It takes them out of the list you search every day, so finding an active customer gets quicker.
It does not delete anything. Their bookings, invoices and pets are all still there, and your reports still count the money they spent. Nothing about your history changes.
Bringing somebody back
Archived customers have their own list. Open the customer there and unarchive them, and they go straight back into the main list with everything intact.
This happens more often than people expect. Somebody moves away and comes back, or a customer who stopped coming returns after a year.
Why not just delete
Because you almost never want to. Deleting a customer would take their invoices with them, which breaks last year's numbers and leaves you unable to answer a question about a bill.
Archiving gets you the tidy list without that cost.
When to archive
A good habit is once or twice a year rather than one at a time. Go through customers who have not booked in a long while and archive them together.
Do not archive somebody with money outstanding. Settle the bill first, or you will lose track of it.
If you cannot find a customer
Check the archived list before you add them again. Adding a duplicate splits their history across two records, and merging them afterwards is far more work than looking in one extra place.