You have a few options when adding customers to your instance: You can import a list of your companies, you can have employees add new companies, or you can allow your customers to sign up and create their own accounts.
When it comes to importing customers and contacts versus letting them create accounts on their own, it doesn't have to be an either-or decision. You can split it up based on the different types of customers you have. For example, you can use some customers as a beta group to work out the bugs and get initial feedback, while ignoring others you don't want to create accounts for. Importing allows you to have control over the data and formatting, while letting customers create their own accounts gives them control over their usernames and passwords. To approach this, gather all your data into one Excel sheet, clean it up, and identify different customer types. Create timed imports based on the different types, and execute the plan.
The video explains how to get customers and entities into the system. There are three entities: companies, company contacts, and individual accounts. Companies are self-explanatory, company contacts work for companies, and individuals are people who pay their bills. There are two ways to input entities into the system: manually or by importing a spreadsheet. If you have a list of companies, the quickest way is to import them. If you need to create an account manually within the system, you can use the add new feature. The article also covers the various fields required to create an account and the importance of correctly formatting the file before importing.
If your customer base is primarily businesses, or you don't accept orders from individuals, you can set "Allow Personal Account Registration" to No. This will require that users enter a business name to create a customer account.
