/accounting/contacts — in the left navigation under Accounting → Customers & Vendors.
📷 Screenshot: Customers & Vendors list page with the All / Customers / Vendors tabs and the Outstanding Balance summary card — to be added.
Multi-business note
Contacts are stored per accounting book. If your organisation runs more than one business (book), each book keeps its own customer and vendor list. Switch the active business using the business switcher in the top bar before adding or editing contacts, and you will only see — and only affect — the contacts that belong to the book you are currently in.Contact types
When you create a contact you must choose a type. The type controls where the contact appears (the Customers tab, the Vendors tab, or both) and which documents it can be used on.
You normally only pick Customer, Vendor, or Both yourself. The Employee type is special and is managed for you by the system.
Employee contacts (automatic)
When a member of staff first transacts in a book — for example, a salary advance, a loan, a reimbursement, or a payroll settlement — Hitaji automatically creates a hidden Employee contact for that person in that book. This is what lets staff balances (advances owed, salary payable, loans) show up in your aged receivables and payables grouped by the real person. You do not create or edit these yourself; they appear automatically the first time the employee has a financial transaction in the book. There is at most one Employee contact per person per book.Creating a contact
- Go to Accounting → Customers & Vendors (
/accounting/contacts). - Click Add Customer or Vendor (top-right).
- Fill in the fields below.
- Save.
📷 Screenshot: Create-contact form showing type selector, name, and tax fields — to be added.
Fields
Display name rule. Hitaji always stores a display name. It uses Name if you provide it; otherwise it joins first + last name; otherwise the email; and as a last resort “Unnamed Contact”. So at minimum, give the contact a name or an email.
Duplicate email
If you enter an email that already belongs to another contact in the same book, the save is blocked with “Contact with email ’…’ already exists”. Email is the system’s de-duplication key — change the email or find the existing contact instead of creating a second one.Editing a contact
Open a contact from the list and change any field. The same rules apply as on create: a changed email must still be unique within the book, and the display name is recomputed if you edit the name fields. Tax details (TIN, legal name, NIN, BRN, buyer type) can be updated at any time.Contact balances
Each contact row shows an outstanding balance. This is the single most useful number on the page: it tells you the net amount standing between you and that party.- A positive balance means the contact (a customer) owes you money — open receivables.
- A negative balance means you owe the contact (a vendor) — open payables.
Behind the scenes — how the balance is calculated
The balance is receivables minus payables for that contact in the current book:- Receivables = the sum of the balance still due on that contact’s invoices, counting only invoices that are live (not Draft and not Void).
- Payables = the sum of that contact’s expenses that are awaiting approval or approved and still unpaid.
balance = open invoice balances − open unpaid expenses. A customer with one unpaid 500,000 invoice shows +500,000; a vendor you owe 300,000 shows −300,000.
Note for accountants. The list-level balance figure is driven by invoices and expenses. Staff sub-ledger balances (advances, loans, salary payable) on Employee contacts surface through the aged receivables/payables reports rather than this single number.
Why a balance might look slightly out of date
For speed, Hitaji keeps a cached balance for each contact and refreshes it automatically:- The cache is considered fresh for 5 minutes. Within that window the stored figure is shown instantly.
- Whenever a journal entry that touches a contact is posted, that contact’s balance is recomputed immediately in the background.
How a contact links to invoices, bills and payments
A contact is the connective tissue across the whole accounting module:- Invoices are raised to a customer. The invoice’s outstanding amount feeds that customer’s receivable balance.
- Bills and expenses are recorded against a vendor. Their unpaid amounts feed that vendor’s payable balance.
- Payments (receipts and disbursements) are matched to the same contact and clear down the invoices or bills, which in turn reduces the contact’s balance.
Linking a contact to a CRM contact
If you also use the CRM module, the same real-world person or company may exist both as an accounting contact (customer/vendor) and as a CRM contact. Hitaji lets you connect the two so they refer to the same party.- The link is one-to-one: an accounting contact can be linked to exactly one CRM contact, and vice-versa.
- If you try to link a customer/vendor that is already linked to a different CRM contact (or the CRM contact is already linked elsewhere), Hitaji blocks it with a clear message. Unlink the existing pairing first.
- Unlinking is always safe and is a no-op if nothing was linked.
📷 Screenshot: Contact detail with the “Link CRM contact” action — to be added.
Deleting a contact
You can delete a contact from its row or detail view. Deletion is a soft delete — the record is hidden, not physically destroyed, so historical documents that reference it remain intact. You cannot delete a contact that has an outstanding balance. If the contact still owes you (or you owe them), Hitaji refuses with “Cannot delete contact with outstanding balance”. Settle or clear the open invoices/bills first, then delete.Access & permissions
- Viewing customers & vendors requires the
accounting:readscope (the page is gated onaccounting-contacts:readin navigation). - Creating, editing, and deleting contacts is available to users with accounting write access in the book.