With Global Customers, you can adapt TIMIFY even better to the needs of your company and all of your locations. It lets you easily transition from local to global customer management, saving you a lot of time and making everything much more intuitive.

However, besides the standard Global Customers, we also offer you the option of using Global Shared Customers, which is the perfect solution if you want to have the same customer data in all of your branches. Keep in mind that if you want to use Global Shared Customers, you have to make that choice at the start when setting up.

In this article, we'll show you the differences between these two features, as well as their advantages and disadvantages, so you can decide which one is more suitable for your case.

Article structure:

1. How do you add a Global Customer?

2. How do Global Customers work?

3. What are Global Shared Customers and do they have any limitations?

4. FAQ

1. How do you add a Global Customer?

Initially, Global Customers are the default option in the Branch Manager, so you don't need to do anything additional to activate them.

By creating a Global Customer, you can specify the branches where you want them to appear. Go to Global Customers > Customers and click on the "Add customer" icon.

After filling out your customer's information, click on the Branches tab.

You then have to choose whether to make them available for All branches (that would include any new branches created in the future as well), or for Specific branches that you can select manually.

If at any time you select All branches and save your choice, this action is irreversible and you won't be able to switch to Specific branches later.

2. How do Global Customers work?

As you saw, Global Customers can be created from the Branch Manager, and you need to select in which branch they should appear. It's also possible to add them directly in one of the branches, but then the customer will only appear there.

So, what happens if you want to change something in the customer profile?
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Let's say you want to edit the phone number of your customer in one of the branches of your company.

If you then go to Branch Overwrites, you can see in which branch there is a difference from the global version of this customer.

Then, you decide that you want to change the email address of this customer, and you do so from the Branch Manager. This change will appear in all branches that don't have a local overwrite.

In our example, this means that it won't appear for the London Office branch, where we changed the phone number of the customer. If you go into this branch, find the customer, and click on reset to remove the local overwrite, then the customer's phone number will be removed, but he will get the email address that we applied earlier.

Note: If you decide that you don't want branches to overwrite the customers and turn off the setting from Global Settings > Permissions, you won't have the option to edit them from the branch itself.

3. What are Global Shared Customers and do they have any limitations?

With Global Shared Customers, everyone will have access to the customer and he will be updated in all of the branches.

This is useful in case you have a lot of customers and don't want to duplicate them in all of the branches, or you want the changes to be applicable everywhere.

When using Global Shared Customers, any modification to a customer's information (e.g. name, phone number, etc.) made in a specific branch will also be applied to all other branches, including the Branch Manager.

Remember that once you've activated this feature, if a client books an appointment with you, they will automatically become a Global Shared Customer.

One of the limitations of Global Shared Customers is that you won't be able to see in which store the customer has booked the appointment from the Branch Manager.

Another important thing to note is that since all data fields will become global, you won't be able to create new ones on a local level. As a result of that, the data upload function won't be available.

ℹ️ Global Shared Customers can only be activated in the beginning when you set up your TIMIFY account and can't be activated/deactivated later. Your Account Manager will help you set it up if you decide to use the feature.

4. FAQ

Q. What are Global Elements?

Global Elements simplify the transformation of local entities (can be customers, services, etc.) into global entities within TIMIFY, ensuring a seamless and efficient management process.
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​Q. What happens if I link a company to an enterprise which has Global Shared Customers?

If your company wants to be part of an enterprise with Global Shared Customers, all of the current data from this company will be deleted. Deleting happens the moment you link the company to the enterprise. Also, all of the other global customers will be automatically synched to this account.

​Q. Can I later change from Global Shared Customers to standard Global Customers if I don't want to use this feature anymore?
No, turning off Global Shared Customers is impossible once you have it, so you must be sure that this is what you need from the beginning.