Customer database for tailors: using measurement history to bring customers back

A name and a phone number get you started. What makes the record worth keeping is everything that collects around it over the years. In TailorSync a customer profile holds:

A customer database is only useful if each person appears once. Paper registers and spreadsheets drift the other way: the same customer turns up as Mohammed, Mohd and M. Al Hammadi across three pages, and his measurements are split between them. TailorSync uses the phone number to stop that. When someone types a number that already belongs to a customer, the form names that customer and offers Use this client, so the staff member picks the existing record instead of starting a second one. Emails have to be unique too.

Finding someone is a search box that matches name, phone, email and, for business accounts, company name. A customer who calls the shop can be found by the number on your screen while they are still talking. Customers you no longer serve can be set to Inactive, which hides them from the default list and keeps their history. Deleting is permanent, takes their measurements with it, and is refused for anyone who has orders or a credit history.

When you save a new measurement set, it becomes the active one and the older sets stay on the profile marked Inactive. Over a few years that builds a history: you can see that a customer's chest measurement has crept up, or go back to the set you used for his wedding kandura. Each order also keeps its own copy of the measurements it was cut to, so editing or deleting a set later never changes an order that was already made.

This history is what brings customers back. Someone who knows their measurements are on file can order a new kandura or abaya by phone or with a short visit, and the garment fits the way the last one did. When you take the order, the active set is picked for you, or the set named after the garment if there is one, and the tailor sees those numbers on the workshop copy. For how to take and store the measurements themselves, see how to store tailor measurements online.

Every customer profile has a Statistics tab. The four tiles at the top show their Orders, what was Billed, what is still Owed and the date of their Last Order. Under those, TailorSync shows the average order value, how reliably they pay, and a line such as Last order 45d ago - reach out once a customer has gone more than 30 days without ordering. A customer who paid late before gets Sometimes delays - consider reminders instead of Excellent payment history.

To see your best customers together, the Analytics page lists the ten who spent the most in the chosen window (today, the last 7 days or the last 30 days), counting invoices, named till receipts and delivered orders. Analytics comes with the Trial, Expansion and Enterprise plans.

Boutiques, resellers and companies ordering uniforms sit in the same customer list as Wholesale clients. Their record adds a company name, a TRN for their tax invoices, a credit limit, payment terms of COD, Net 30, Net 60 or Net 90, and a standing discount. Their Invoices tab shows what they still owe, and a new invoice warns you when it takes them over their credit limit.

Measurements are personal, so they have their own permission. A role without View client measurements doesn't see the Measurements tab at all, though the workshop still sees the numbers on the garments it has to make. If you run more than one branch, you choose whether each branch shares the customer list. Share it and a customer measured in one shop is already on file in the other; keep it separate and each branch builds its own. See running a tailoring business across several branches.

You don't have to type your customer book in one name at a time. Import Excel on the client list takes a template with name, phone, email, address, company, tax number, credit terms and notes. TailorSync previews the file first, skips rows whose phone number is already in the shop or repeated in the file, and flags rows with no valid phone. The import doesn't carry measurements, so add each customer's set the next time they order. The Starter plan holds up to 2,000 customers; Trial, Expansion and Enterprise have no limit. For the full move off paper, see moving off spreadsheets and paper order books.