In the lifecycle of a customer in ZEP there are four actions: creating, editing, deactivating and deleting. This article describes the complete workflow — from the first master data entry, through ongoing changes, to deactivation or final removal. Which fields are stored on a customer is described in the article Customer data; how the customer list is configured is described in the article Customer overview.
Note: Customer management is available in ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional, not in ZEP Clock. Which fields and actions are visible additionally depends on your role and on the booked add-on modules.
Permissions for customer management
Who may create, edit or delete customers results from the role and two general settings in the administration. The following overview summarizes which role can perform which action. A complete role reference covering all permissions around the customer is provided in the article Customer data.
Role | Create | Edit | Delete |
Administrator | yes | yes | yes |
Department manager (own department, with the Locations and Departments module and the general setting Department managers may create new customers) | yes | yes | no |
User with additional rights (with the general setting Users with additional rights may create customers) | yes | yes (own internal customers) | no |
Key account manager (with the right Key account manager may edit customer) | no | yes (own customers) | no |
Controller / Project controller | no | no | no |
HR manager | no (no access) | no (no access) | no |
Both general settings are located in Administration > Customers > Settings. HR managers generally have no access to customer management — this is intended for data protection reasons.
Creating customers
Customers are created directly from the customer list. When creating, a popup opens with all fields from the later sub-menu Data — you therefore capture the complete master data in one step.
How to create a new customer:
Open Customers in the main menu.
Click New Customer at the top right. The creation popup opens.
Fill in the mandatory fields Customer number (Cust.No) and Name. Currency and the VAT rate are already pre-filled from the general settings and can be overwritten per customer.
Optionally add Industry, Categories, Key account manager, Department (with the Locations and Departments module) and all contact and billing fields.
Click Save. The new customer is immediately active and available in all selection lists.
On save, ZEP sets some values automatically:
Key account manager — if no key account manager was selected in the popup and the general setting Users with additional rights may create customers is active, the creating user is automatically entered as key account manager.
VAT — the default comes from Administration > Customers > Settings; it can be overwritten per customer.
Customer number — with active automatic numbering, ZEP suggests the next free Cust.No; it can be overwritten but must be unique within the tenant.
The customer number is the technical reference to the customer — it can later be changed via the pencil icon next to the Cust.No, and existing invoices then keep the historical number (see the section Editing customers).
Editing customers
You edit a customer's master data directly via the customer detail view in the sub-menu Data. All fields can be edited individually, separated into the tabs General, Contact data and Billing. The complete field reference is provided in the article Customer data.
How to edit an existing customer:
Open Customers in the main menu and select the desired customer.
Switch to the tab General, Contact data or Billing, depending on which fields you want to change.
Adjust the values and click Save.
Special cases when editing:
Changing the customer number (Cust.No) — via the pencil icon next to the Cust.No, the dialog Change data opens. Enter the new number, click Execute and confirm with Save. The change takes effect immediately; with the Invoicing module, however, invoices already created keep the historical number.
Changing the department assignment — only with the Locations and Departments module. Changing the department can affect the visibility of the customer for other department managers.
Managing key account managers — via the sub-menu Key account managers on the customer; there you can add persons, fine-tune permissions (may edit customer, with budget responsibility) and remove individual entries again.
Note: Who may edit the customer depends not only on the role but also on the department assignment and the key account manager assignment — see the permissions table above.
Deactivating customers
When a customer is no longer actively served, you set them to inactive. Inactive customers no longer appear in the customer list and in selection lists of projects, offers or reports by default — but the historical data and all links remain fully preserved.
How to set a customer to inactive:
Open the customer via the main menu Customers.
Switch to the tab General.
Activate the checkbox Inactive and click Save.
What changes after deactivation:
The customer is hidden in the Customer overview as long as the filter is set to active. Via the filter selection inactive or All you bring them back into the display.
The customer is no longer available for new project assignments, offers or invoices.
Existing projects, invoices, receipts and contact persons remain unchanged and can still be used for reports.
To reactivate the customer, remove the checkbox Inactive in the tab General and save again.
Note: Deactivation is the right choice in most cases as soon as a customer has projects, invoices or tickets in ZEP — it preserves the history and prevents incorrect reports. A full deletion is only useful if the customer was created in error and has no dependent data at all.
Deleting customers
Warning: The full deletion removes a customer including all information stored directly on the customer record from ZEP. This action is only useful for test or wrongly created entries. For former business relationships, deactivation is the right choice because it preserves the history.
Administrators reach the delete action via the customer detail view under Actions > Delete customer. Before deletion, ZEP checks whether dependent data exists. If at least one condition is not met, ZEP blocks the deletion and shows the exact reason in a message.
A customer can only be deleted if all of the following conditions are met:
There are no projects assigned to the customer — neither as primary nor as secondary customer.
There are no documents in the customer's document manager (with the Document Management module).
There are no entries in billing — invoices, invoice items, open items or incoming payments (with the Invoicing module).
There are no contact persons with tickets or subtasks and no contact person is registered as the default recipient for auto-created tickets (with the Ticket system module).
There are no offers for this customer (with the Offer creation module).
The customer does not come from a CRM interface (HubSpot, Salesforce) — such customers are deleted in the respective CRM system, and ZEP synchronizes the change automatically.
ZEP shows unmet conditions directly in the delete dialog: for example the exact message „The customer cannot be deleted because projects are present for him.". Resolve the blocking link first (re-assign projects, archive invoices, transfer contact persons) or decide for deactivation.
Note: Customer contact persons are natural persons — a separate anonymization or removal of contact person data (GDPR Article 17) is done via the contact person directly, not via the deletion of the customer. The customer itself is a legal entity and not affected by the pseudonymization logic of employees.