Skip to main content

Customers

The relationship between doctors - offices - customers - billing accounts. How to create and manage customers.

Written by Mykyta Medvediev

Overview

In Pilot, a customer represents a specific doctor at a specific office location. Think of it as "this person at this location." Customers are the foundation of Pilot LMS, as every case is created for a specific customer.

All customers are managed from a single table in Customers → Customers, which provides a flattened view of all related entities including customer details, doctor information, office details, billing accounts, shipping and billing addresses, and shipping routes. From this table, you can navigate to or preview individual customer, doctor, or office pages.

To understand customers, you need to understand their four components:

  1. Doctors: The individual practitioners who are your clients

  2. Offices: The physical locations where doctors operate

  3. Billing Accounts: Customer's billing entity; can have multiple customers covered by it.

  4. Customers: The combination of a doctor and an office, with specific settings for that relationship

Doctor Profiles

Doctor profiles represent the individual practitioners who are your clients. A single doctor can work at multiple office locations, and each doctor-office combination creates a unique customer.

Doctor Properties

Each doctor has the following properties:

  • Name: The doctor's full name

  • Status:

    • Active: Doctor can be used when creating customers

    • Deactivated: Doctor cannot be selected for new customers

  • New Doctor: When enabled, a "New Doctor" badge will appear on cases for customers associated with this doctor

Doctor Reference

Each doctor automatically gets a unique reference identifier. If multiple doctors share the same name, the system appends "-1", "-2", etc. to create unique references. This is managed automatically and cannot be edited.

Doctor Page Features

Once a doctor is created, you can access their dedicated page to view:

  • Reporting

  • Event History Log

Reporting

View comprehensive analytics for all customers associated with this doctor:

  • Client Summary: Duration, total cases, average cases/month, average invoice, late cases, remake rate, cases on hold, total remakes, first and last case dates

  • Cases by Month: Total cases, remake cases, discounted cases

  • Remakes by Month: Both count and rate

  • Financial Analysis by Month: Total invoiced, total payments, total credits, total discounts

  • Top 10 Products: By revenue, showing total invoiced, total discount, case remakes, and line item remakes

Event History Log

Technical logs that allow you to track individual changes made to the doctor entity over time.

Office Locations

An office is a physical location where your doctors operate. A single office can have multiple doctors working there, and each doctor-office combination creates a unique customer with its own settings.

Office Properties

Required Fields:

  1. Name: The office name or location identifier

  2. Tax Area: Used to calculate tax amounts for taxable products on cases. Learn more in Tax Areas

  3. Shipping Address: The address where cases will be shipped

  4. Default Shipping Route: The shipping method used for all shipments to this office unless overridden at the case level. Learn about Shipping Routes.

Optional Fields:

  • Group: Assign the office to a group for better organization and management

Validating Office Address

If you're using our shipping integrations (FedEx/UPS), you need to validate the office address if you want to create shipments to it using one of those shipping carrier integrations. Check out our Office Address Validation article to learn how to do it.

Billing Accounts

The billing account determines which billing entity receives invoices for this customer's cases. The system will automatically select the appropriate billing account based on the office's billing configuration, or you can select/create one manually.

Learn more in Billing Accounts.

Important

Cases reference customers to determine product pricing, but invoices are sent to billing accounts, not customers directly. If a customer doesn't have a billing account assigned, you can create cases, but invoicing will fail.

This structure provides flexibility for different billing scenarios:

  • Multiple doctors in the same office receiving one combined bill

  • Each doctor receiving individual bills

  • A doctor with multiple offices receiving one consolidated invoice

Creating a Customer

The customer creation flow allows you to create or select doctors and offices while configuring all customer-specific settings in one streamlined process.

To create a customer, navigate to Customers → Customers and click the Create Customer button.

Step 1: Doctor Selection

Either:

  • Select an existing doctor from the dropdown, or

  • Create a new doctor by providing:

    • Name (required)

    • Status (required): Active or Deactivated

    • New Doctor flag (optional)

    • Custom Fields

Step 2: Office Selection

Either:

  • Select an existing office from the dropdown, or

  • Create a new office by providing:

    • Name (required)

    • Tax Area (required)

    • Shipping Address (required)

    • Default Shipping Route (required)

    • Group (optional)

    • Custom Fields

Step 3: Billing Account

  • The billing account will be pre-selected for you if the office already has customers with an office-level billing account

  • If it's not pre-selected:

    • Create a new billing account, or

    • Select an existing billing account

Step 4: Customer Properties

  1. Product Pricelist: (*required) Sets the prices this customer will receive for your products. Learn more in Pricelists

  2. Sub-Account Name (*required): Required for "Detailed Billing" billing account types. This is automatically populated but can be customized

  3. Status:

    1. Active: Customer can be selected for new cases and invoiced normally

    2. Hold: Customer can be selected for cases, but you cannot invoice their cases. A hold reason can be specified

    3. Prospect: Automatically changes to "Active" when the first case is received

    4. Deactivated: Customer cannot be selected for new cases

  4. Case Warning: A custom warning message that appears on the case view under the case number whenever this customer is selected. Use this to provide important information about the customer or their preferences

  5. Phone Number: Contact number for the customer

  6. Email Notifications:

    1. List of email addresses that should receive notifications

    2. Customizable notification settings for case updates

  7. Clinical Preferences: Doctor preferences related to your lab's procedures and products. These display below doctor notes on the case view. View our Clinical Preferences Article.

  8. Custom Prices: Override standard pricelist pricing for specific products or services for this customer

  9. Disallowed Products: Specify which products cannot be ordered for this customer

  10. Custom Fields: Track additional information specific to your lab's needs

Optionally, you can add a customer portal user for this customer. This allows the customer to access the client portal and view their cases, messages, and other information.

Case Creation

When you select a customer on the case view, you're selecting a specific doctor at a specific location with all their unique settings, pricing, and preferences.

Managing Customers

Navigate to Customers → Customers to view the customers table. This table provides a flattened view of all related entities, including:

  • Customer details

  • Doctor details

  • Office details

  • Billing account details

  • Shipping and billing addresses

  • Selected shipping routes

From this table, you can:

  • Navigate to individual customer, doctor, or office pages

  • Preview customer, doctor, or office details

  • Filter and search customers, then save those filters into filter views

  • Perform bulk actions

Customer Page Features

Access comprehensive analytics and management features on the customer page.

Reporting

  • Client Summary: Duration, total cases, average cases/month, average invoice, late cases, remake rate, cases on hold, total remakes, first and last case dates

  • Cases by Month: Total cases, remake cases, discounted cases

  • Remakes by Month: Both count and rate

  • Financial Analysis by Month: Total invoiced, total payments, total credits, total discounts

  • Top 10 Products: By revenue, showing total invoiced, total discount, case remakes, and line-item remakes

Event History Log

Technical logs that allow you to track individual changes made to the customer entity over time.

Understanding the Customer Structure

Here's the basic structure required to create and invoice cases:

  1. A customer has to have status Active or Prospect

  2. A customer's doctor profile has to have status Active

  3. A customer's office location has to have status Active

  4. A customer's billing account has to have status Active

Required Relationships

  • Every doctor must have at least one customer (be assigned to at least one office) at all times. A doctor cannot exist in the system without being associated with at least one office.

  • Every office must have at least one customer to be active. If an office does not have any doctors in it, the office becomes Deleted

  • Every billing account must have at least one customer to be active. If a billing account does not have any customers, it becomes Deleted

You can still access entities with status Deleted if you want to restore them.

Did this answer your question?