Managing Customers, Vendors and Products

Customers, vendors, and products are the master lists that every transaction in Booksmor draws from. A clean masters list means faster invoices, correct GST, and trustworthy reports.

This guide covers all three — they share the same shape and tools, so we’ll go through them together.

Time to read: ~10 minutes. You’ll need: access to your Booksmor account; the GSTIN, state and contact details of the parties you do business with; and your product list (with HSN/SAC and GST rates).

What you get when this is done

• A reliable list of who you sell to (Customers), who you buy from (Vendors) and what you trade in (Products).
• GST classification baked into every record — so each new invoice automatically picks CGST + SGST vs IGST, and each line carries the right rate.
• Editable forms — you can rename fields, hide ones you don’t use, or add your own (e.g. “Loyalty tier” on customers).
• Bulk import + export — no manual one-by-one re-entry when you migrate from Tally / Zoho or share the list with another tool.

The three masters at a glance

Customers and vendors share the same form (we call this entity a Party) — same fields, same behaviour, separate lists. A vendor who’s also a customer is added twice, once on each side.

Part A — Customers and Vendors

Add a customer (or vendor)

1. From the sidebar, Masters → Customers (or Vendors).
2. Fill in the form at the top:
   • Name — the business or personal name. Required.
   • GSTIN — their 15-character GST number, if they’re registered. Leave blank for unregistered/B2C parties.
   • Country — IN by default. Change if you’re invoicing abroad.
   • State (place of supply) — critical for GST. Pick from the dropdown. Determines whether each invoice to this party uses CGST + SGST (same state as you) or IGST (different state). Leave blank only if state truly doesn’t apply (e.g. an export-only customer).
   • City, Pincode, Address line 1, Address line 2 — printed on the invoice/payment voucher.
   • Email — used when you email an invoice or receipt to this party.
   • Phone — printed on the voucher; also handy for searching the list.
3. Click Add.

The party appears in the table below. The form clears so you can add the next one.

Edit or delete

In the table, click Edit to load the party back into the form (the button changes to Save changes + Cancel). Click Delete to remove the party — Booksmor will block the deletion if the party has any posted vouchers against them, to protect your audit trail; deactivate them instead by editing and clearing the email/phone, or leave them as-is.

Search

Use the Search name / GSTIN / city / phone… box above the table to narrow down. The match is case-insensitive and partial — typing “bang” finds every party with “Bangalore” in their city.

Customise the form

Don’t need the GSTIN field because you only sell to consumers? Want Loyalty tier as a custom field? Both are possible through the Form Designer:

• From the sidebar, Setup → Designer → Forms.
• Pick the form (Customer / Vendor / Product), then hide unwanted fields, mark some as required, reorder, change widths, and add custom text/number/date fields.
• Save — every screen that uses the form reflects the change immediately.

This is a power-user feature; default forms work for nearly every Indian SMB. Only touch it if you have a specific reason.

Part B — Products (and services)

In Booksmor, everything you sell or buy is a Product — physical goods, services, or digital items.

Add a product

1. From the sidebar, Masters → Products. (The page heading reads Products & Services.)
2. Fill in the top form:
   • Name — what shows on the invoice line, e.g. “Wireless mouse” or “Annual tax filing”. Required.
   • SKU — your internal stock-keeping code, e.g. MOUSE-001. Optional for services. The SKU is what e-commerce connections (Shopify / WooCommerce / custom site) match incoming orders against.
   • HSN / SAC — the GST classification code (HSN for goods, SAC for services). E.g. 8471 for computer hardware, 9982 for legal services. Look up codes at https://services.gst.gov.in if you’re unsure.
   • Unit — NOS (numbers/pieces) by default. Use HRS for services, KG, MTR, LTR, BOX as appropriate. Free text — anything 3–5 characters works.
   • Sale ₹ — the standard selling price (editable per-invoice).
   • Purchase ₹ — your typical buying cost; surfaces as the default rate on purchase vouchers.
   • GST % — the rate, e.g. 18, 12, 5, 0. Must match what your HSN/SAC dictates.
   • Type — Goods, Service, or Digital. Drives whether stock applies (only Goods), and whether the line says HSN or SAC on the invoice.
3. (Goods only) Two extra fields appear when you pick Goods:
   • Material role — leave as — (none) unless you use Production. Tagging items as Raw material, Semi-finished, or Finished good filters the BOM dropdowns in the manufacturing module.
   • Allow negative stock — leave unticked unless you knowingly want to sell stock you haven’t received yet. With it off, Booksmor blocks sales that would push stock below zero.
4. (Optional) Description (for reports) — free text shown on reports and summaries.
5. Click Add product.

The product appears in the table below. The form clears for the next entry.

Edit, delete and search

The same patterns as customers and vendors: Edit to modify, Delete to remove (blocked when posted vouchers reference the item), and the search box matches name / SKU / HSN.

Bulk import

For more than a handful of products, the bulk path is much faster than the form.

• From the sidebar, Setup → Import / Migrate → Products.
• Paste CSV (or upload a .csv file). Header row: name,sku,hsn_sac,unit,sale_rate,purchase_rate,tax_rate,product_type.
• Booksmor matches existing rows by SKU and updates them; new SKUs are created.
• Customers, vendors, accounts, and journal entries have parallel import endpoints — same page, same shape.

If you’re migrating from Tally or Zoho Books, the Import page has explicit migrators that read those export formats directly (no CSV reshaping required).

Bulk export

The reverse, useful for sharing with your CA or another tool:

• Sidebar → Setup → Import / Migrate → Export.
• Five CSV exports: Customers, Vendors, Items, Accounts, Journal.

Re-importing an exported file is safe — it updates by SKU/name rather than duplicating.

How masters flow through GST

The three masters together determine how GST is calculated on every invoice. Get them right once, and tax just works.

The blue strip at the top of every Sales/Purchase invoice — “Place of supply: Karnataka (29) · Intra-state · CGST + SGST” — is Booksmor showing you the result of that lookup live, so you spot wrong configuration before you post.

Common questions

Can the same party be both a customer and a vendor? Yes — add them once on each side. Each side has its own ledger. (Booksmor doesn’t auto-link the two; if you net amounts between them, you’ll do that via a journal voucher.)

Do I have to enter GSTIN for every customer? No. GSTIN is optional. For B2C / consumer customers, leave it blank and the invoice prints without it. Just remember to set the customer’s State anyway — it’s used for GST treatment even without a GSTIN.

Can I make GSTIN mandatory at my end, even though it’s optional in the standard form? Yes. From the Form Designer (Setup → Designer → Forms → Customer), tick Required for GSTIN. From then on, the Add button is disabled until a GSTIN is entered.

Why does Booksmor block deletion of a customer / product I’ve used? To preserve your audit trail. A posted voucher referencing a deleted master would leave a dangling reference and break reports. If a party / product is genuinely defunct, edit it instead — clear the contact details, prefix the name with “ZZ — ” so it sorts to the bottom of dropdowns, and leave it for history.

What’s the difference between a Product of type Service vs Digital? Both behave the same for invoicing and GST — no stock, no negative-stock check. Digital is purely a label that lets you filter or report on digital goods separately if your business mixes both. Use whichever describes the item more accurately to your customers.

My products list is huge — can I organise them? The Products page paginates 25 at a time and supports searching by name / SKU / HSN. For deeper organisation (categories, sub-categories), use Custom fields via the Form Designer to add a “Category” field, then filter by it.

I sell the same physical thing at different rates to different customers. How do I model that? Two options. (1) One product, override the Rate on each invoice line manually — fine for occasional differences. (2) Create separate products (e.g. “Widget — retail” and “Widget — wholesale”) — fine when the difference is structural. Most SMBs use option 1.

Can I attach images to products? Not in the current release. Custom fields support text / number / date only; image attachments are planned.

Troubleshooting

“Cannot delete: party has linked vouchers” when I click Delete. The party has posted invoices/receipts against them. Either keep them (recommended — audit history stays clean) or void/unpost the linked vouchers first, then delete.

The Sales invoice GST strip says “Local sale” but my customer is clearly in another state. The customer record doesn’t have a State (place of supply) set. Edit the customer, pick the state from the dropdown, save — then re-open the invoice. The strip will switch to “Inter-state · IGST”.

GST % auto-fills as 0 when I pick a product on an invoice line. The product’s GST % field is 0 (or empty). Edit the product, set the correct rate (5/12/18/28/etc.), save. Any new invoice line will pick up the corrected rate; previously-posted invoices stay as-is.

Bulk import says “row N: invalid” — what to fix? Look at the column the import error names. Most common causes: SKU has trailing whitespace, tax_rate has a % sign (should be a plain number — 18, not “18%”), or product_type is something other than goods / service / digital.

Custom field I added isn’t showing on the form. Check that you saved the Form Designer change (Save button at the bottom of the Designer page), and refresh the masters page in your browser. Custom fields appear at the bottom of the form by default; scroll down.

Need more help? Email support@booksmor.com with: the master list you’re editing (Customers/Vendors/Products), the specific name or SKU, and a screenshot of the error.