Manage Customers & Vendors

Explore how you can utilize the available options efficiently to manage your network of customers and vendors.


Manage Addresses

Apart from the billing and shipping address, you can also store additional addresses for a customer or a vendor and manage them. In this section you’ll learn how to:

Add New Address

Apart from the billing and shipping address, you can also store additional addresses for a customer or a vendor and manage them. In this section you’ll learn how to:

Insight: To enter additional addresses for a customer or vendor, ensure that you have already entered the billing and shipping address.

To add a new address:

Add Alternate Address 1

Insight: You can enter up to ten additional addresses for a customer or a vendor excluding the default billing and shipping addresses.

Change Default Address

If your customer or vendor has temporarily changed their billing/shipping location, you can also change the default address assigned to them in Zoho Inventory. To do so:

Change default address

The default billing/shipping address will be changed and the old address will be moved to the Additional Address section.

Edit Address

To edit an address for a customer or a vendor:

Edit address

Insight: Select the Update the address in all previous transactions option if you wish to update this address in all transactions that have used the old address. This includes draft invoices, sales orders, purchase orders and open bills.

Choose Different Address

While creating a transaction, the default billing and shipping address will be populated for the chosen customer or vendor. However, you can also choose from one of the additional addresses as the billing/shipping address.

Add Alternate Address 3

Pro Tip: To add a new address on the fly, scroll down to the end of the address list and click the + Add New Address button. Enter the address and click Save to add and select this address for the contact.

Delete Address

To delete an additional address for a customer or a vendor:

Delete additional address

Change Customer Type

To change the customer type:

Pro Tip: You can apply the appropriate filter from the top left corner of the module page to narrow down your search.

Change Contact Type

Deactivate Customers/Vendors

If you don’t want to delete a customer or a vendor but would like to shelf them for the time being, you can change their status to inactive. This ensures that the customer or vendor exists but cannot be used in transactions.

To do so:

This customer/vendor will be deactivated and will no longer appear while creating new transactions.

Mark Contact Inactive

Pro Tip: You can make the customer or vendor active again by clicking More > Mark as Active.


Clone Customer/Vendor

Cloning is the quickest and easiest way to create a new customer or vendor from an existing customer or vendor.

To clone a customer or a vendor:

Link Contacts

The existing contact’s details will be auto-populated.


Export Customers/Vendors

To take a backup of your customer or vendor list, you can export them in a file from Zoho Inventory to your computer.

To export your the contacts:

menu icon with the export option

A copy of your customers/vendors list will be saved as a .CSV or .XLS inside your default downloads folder.

Image of the contacts export page

Merge Customers/Vendors

If two customers or vendors are related, you can merge their details into a single contact in Zoho Inventory.

Insight: The contacts that you choose to merge must have the same currency.

To merge two customers:

Merge Contacts

Insight: A master customer is the primary contact with which the child contact’s details and associated transactions will be merged. Post merging, the child contact becomes inactive. Do note that you cannot undo the merge.

Merge Contacts - Choose master contact

All transactions associated with the child contact will be merged with the master contact and the child contact will be made inactive.

Pro Tip: You can also merge multiple contacts in one go.


Attach Files

Documents such as contractual agreements, terms of service etc., can be attached to the relevant customers or vendors in Zoho Inventory and used for future reference.

To attach a document:

Attach File

The file will be uploaded and attached to the contact.

Insight: A maximum of 5 files (not exceeding a size of 5 MB each) can be attached to a contact.


Update Customer or Vendor from CRM

On integrating Zoho Inventory with Zoho CRM, you can import your customer and vendor details from Zoho CRM into Zoho Inventory.

When you modify a customer or a vendor in Zoho CRM, the automatic sync that takes place once every two hours will normally update the changes in Zoho inventory.

To fetch the updates for a specific CRM contact instantly:

Fetch CRM Contact

The customers/vendors will be reimported from Zoho CRM and their information will be updated in Zoho Inventory.


Some businesses have customers who are also their vendors. For instance, when you provide food services for a business or individual, they become your client, and when they in turn provide accounting services for you, they become your vendor. 

If you have a customer who is also your vendor, you have to create them as two separate contacts in Zoho Inventory and link them.

To link them:

Link Contacts

Post linking, you can view the payables and receivables in both contact pages.


Delete Customers/Vendors

To delete a customer or a vendor:

Pro Tip: You can apply the appropriate filter to view the desired list of customers/vendords. Learn more about filtering contacts.

Delete Contact

Insight: If the contact has transactions associated with it, you have to delete the transactions and then delete the contact. An easier way to resolve this would be, to deactivate the contact.

Pro Tip: When you update the billing address or the shipping address of a contact, you have the choice of updating these changes across all draft orders and transactions.


Bulk Action

The bulk operation allows you to perform a specific action (merge, mark as inactive or delete) for multiple customers/vendors in one go.

More Actions - Merge Contacts 1

To perform a bulk action on contacts:

Merge Multiple Customers/Vendors

To merge multiple contacts

More Actions - Merge Contacts 1

Insight: A master contact is the primary contact with which the child contact’s details and associated transactions will be merged. Post merging, the child contact becomes inactive. Do note that you cannot undo the merge.

More Actions - Merge Contacts 2
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