Customer groups

Many B2B customers buy from several locations but pay from one HQ. In Streamlined, each location is its own customer, and a customer group ties them together so the HQ can get the invoices, pay for every location, and receive one statement.

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How groups work

A customer group is a named set of your customers. A customer is in one group or none. Each member keeps its own invoices, addresses, and balance, and the group adds settings that apply to all of them: A group also gives you the group’s totals: open balance, invoice count, aging across every member, and a group statement for the HQ. A Shopify B2B company is a customer group in Streamlined, and each of its contacts is a member customer.

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Create a group and add members

1. Create the group with Create customer group:
   curl https://api.staging.streamlinedpayments.com/api/v1/customer_groups \
     -X POST \
     -H "X-App-Id: $STREAMLINED_APP_ID" \
     -H "X-Api-Key: $STREAMLINED_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{ "customer_group": { "company_name": "Northwind Traders" } }'
   
2. Add the locations with Add members to group, using the uuid from the response:
   curl https://api.staging.streamlinedpayments.com/api/v1/customer_groups/5a7d2e90-1c3b-4f6a-8e2d-9b0c4d7e1f23/members \
     -X POST \
     -H "X-App-Id: $STREAMLINED_APP_ID" \
     -H "X-Api-Key: $STREAMLINED_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "customer_uuids": [
         "c1f0a92b-4d63-4e88-b0a7-2f9e4c6d1b35",
         "e4b7c2d1-8f3a-4a6e-9c0b-2d5f7a1e3b84"
       ]
     }'
   
   Adding only touches the customers you name. A customer already in another group moves to this one. To take customers out, call Remove members from group.
3. Set the group’s net terms with Update customer group. Do this after adding members: saving terms copies them onto the members in the group at that moment.
   curl https://api.staging.streamlinedpayments.com/api/v1/customer_groups/5a7d2e90-1c3b-4f6a-8e2d-9b0c4d7e1f23 \
     -X PUT \
     -H "X-App-Id: $STREAMLINED_APP_ID" \
     -H "X-Api-Key: $STREAMLINED_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{ "customer_group": { "net_terms": 30 } }'
   
4. In the Streamlined app, open the group and set its billing address and, if the HQ pays for everyone, its billing account.

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Which address an invoice uses

When you issue an invoice, Streamlined addresses it to the first of these that’s set:

1. The customer’s group’s billing address.
2. The customer’s preferred billing address, set with Set address as default billing.
3. The customer’s first address, if it has no preferred billing address.

So for a customer in a group, the group’s billing address wins over the customer’s own. Every invoice keeps a copy of the address it was issued to, so changing an address later doesn’t change what’s printed on invoices you’ve already issued.

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Centralized billing

The billing account is one of the group’s members, usually the HQ. When a member’s invoice is paid at checkout or charged through QuickPay, Streamlined uses the billing account’s saved card or bank account instead of the member’s own. Centralized billing is available on Scale and up. The billing account decides who pays. It doesn’t change where invoices are addressed or who gets the emails: those come from the billing address and email delivery settings. One payment from the HQ can cover invoices across every member of the group, and credit on one member’s invoice can be applied to another member’s invoice.

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Find a customer’s group

Get customer details returns the customer’s customer_group. To filter invoices or transactions to a whole group, pass customer_group_uuid to List invoices or List transactions.