# Create a Customer (/how-to/customers/create-a-customer)



Create a customer record when you want to track someone in your CRM before they book online, or when you need to add a walk-in or phone reservation customer manually. Customers created through the online booking flow are added automatically -- this guide covers the manual path.

Before you begin [#before-you-begin]

* You need access to the Resytech Dashboard.
* You need the customer's name and at least one email address. Email is required and is used as the unique identifier to prevent duplicates.

Steps [#steps]

1. In the sidebar, click **CRM** to open the CRM dashboard.
2. Click the **Manage Customers** quick action, or navigate directly to **CRM > Customers**.
3. On the Customers list page, click **Add New Customer** (or the edit icon on an existing customer to open the same form in edit mode). A modal dialog appears.
4. Fill in the customer fields:

| Field               | Required           | Description                                                                                                                                                              |
| ------------------- | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Name**            | Yes                | The customer's full name. Maximum 100 characters.                                                                                                                        |
| **Email Addresses** | Yes (at least one) | One or more email addresses. The first email is treated as the primary. Click **Add Email** to add additional addresses. Emails are normalized to lowercase and trimmed. |
| **Phone Numbers**   | No                 | One or more phone numbers. Click **Add Phone** to add additional numbers. The first number is stored as the primary phone.                                               |
| **Company**         | No                 | A company or organization name. Maximum 100 characters.                                                                                                                  |
| **Address**         | No                 | A mailing or billing address with fields for Street, City, State, ZIP Code, and Country.                                                                                 |
| **Date of Birth**   | No                 | The customer's date of birth, entered via a date picker.                                                                                                                 |
| **Tags**            | No                 | Free-form labels for segmenting customers. Click **Add Tag**, type a name, and press Enter. See [Manage Customer Tags](/how-to/customers/manage-customer-tags) for more. |
| **Notes**           | No                 | Free-text notes about this customer, visible only to your team.                                                                                                          |

5. Click **Create Customer**.

Validation rules [#validation-rules]

* **Name is required.** The form will not submit without a name.
* **At least one email is required.** The first email field is marked as required.
* **Duplicate email check.** If a customer with the same email already exists at your location, creation is rejected with an "A customer with this email already exists" error.
* Empty email and phone fields (left blank in multi-field mode) are automatically filtered out before submission.

What happens next [#what-happens-next]

* The new customer appears in the customer list, sorted by most recent first.
* The customer's **Source** is automatically set to `dashboard` to indicate they were manually created (as opposed to `booking` for customers created through the online flow).
* You can click the customer's name or the view icon to open their [detail page](/how-to/customers/view-customer-history), where analytics, booking history, and communication logs will populate as the customer interacts with your business.

Tips [#tips]

* **Emails are case-insensitive.** "[John@Example.com](mailto:John@Example.com)" and "[john@example.com](mailto:john@example.com)" are treated as the same address.
* **Phone formatting.** Phone numbers are stored with their country code. The default country is US (+1). Enter the number in any common format -- the system will normalize it.
* **Use tags early.** Adding tags like "VIP", "Corporate", or "Returning" at creation time makes filtering easier later. You can always add or remove tags from the customer detail page.
* **Walk-in customers.** If a walk-in later books online using the same email, the system will match them to this existing record rather than creating a duplicate.