# Customers in GrandNode: an overview

Customers

In GrandNode every visitor is a customer. The moment someone opens the storefront, adds a product to the cart or starts checkout, GrandNode keeps a customer record for them, even before they register. Registration does not create a new account, it converts that guest record into a registered one, so the cart, the wishlist and the browsing history carry over. This article explains the model and walks through the **Customers** menu of the admin panel, so you know which screen to open for which job.

### Guests and registered customers

Every customer belongs to one or more **customer groups**. Two of them describe the account itself and exactly one of them is always present:

- **Guests** - a visitor who has not registered. Guests can browse, see prices and use the cart and wishlist (these are the default permissions of the Guests group). Guest records are not shown in the customer list unless you filter for them.
- **Registered** - a customer with an e-mail address and a password who can sign in, see the order history and manage addresses on the storefront.

GrandNode refuses to save a customer who is in both groups or in neither of them. On top of that a customer can belong to any number of other groups: the built-in **Administrators**, **Vendors**, **Store manager** and **Sales manager** groups, and groups you create yourself for pricing, visibility or free shipping. Group membership is what decides who may open which panel and what they may do there - see [Customer groups and access control](https://grandnode.com/customers-customer-groups).

### One account, many roles

GrandNode has no separate "user" table for staff. An administrator, a store manager or a vendor is a customer record with extra groups and a link to what they manage:

| Who | Customer groups | Link on the customer record | Panel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopper | Registered (or Guests) | \- | storefront only |
| Administrator | Administrators, Registered | \- | `/admin` |
| Store manager | Store manager, Registered | **Manager of store** | `/store` |
| Vendor | Vendors, Registered | **Manager of vendor** | `/vendor` |
| Sales manager | Sales manager, Registered | **Sales employee** | `/admin`, limited to own customers and orders |

Because it is all one record, the same person can shop in your store with the account they use to manage it. The only combinations GrandNode blocks are the ones that would mix scopes: an administrator cannot also be linked to a vendor or a store, and a vendor account cannot be a store manager at the same time.

### The Customers menu

![The Customers flyout in the admin sidebar: Customers, Customer groups, Customer tags, Vendors, Vendor reviews, Sales employees, Customer attributes and Address attributes](https://grandnode.com/Plugins/Theme.GrandNodeCom/Content/kb/customers/customers-menu.webp)

The Customers menu.

Open **Customers** in the left-hand menu of the admin panel. The entries are:

| Menu entry | What you do there |
|---|---|
| **Customers** | Search, create, edit, export and delete customer accounts. See [Finding and editing customers](https://grandnode.com/customers-manage-customers). |
| **Customer groups** | Built-in and custom groups, their order limits, free shipping, tax exemption and the access control list. |
| **Customer tags** | Free labels for segmenting customers - used by newsletter campaigns and suggested products. |
| **Vendors** | Sellers in a marketplace set-up and the customer accounts that manage them. |
| **Vendor reviews** | Approve or remove reviews customers wrote about vendors. |
| **Sales employee** | Internal sales staff that customers can be assigned to, with a commission rate. |
| **Customer attributes** | Extra fields on the registration and account forms. |
| **Address attributes** | Extra fields on the address form. |

Two customer screens live under **Reports**: **Online customers** (who is on the site right now) and **Customer reports** (best customers and registrations over time). They are described in [Online customers and customer reports](https://grandnode.com/customers-online-customers-and-reports).

![The Customers list in the GrandNode admin panel with four registered accounts](https://grandnode.com/Plugins/Theme.GrandNodeCom/Content/kb/customers/customer-list.webp)

Customers → Customers: the default view lists registered customers, newest first.

### Where customer settings live

How people register and sign in - the registration method, which form fields are shown and required, password rules, two-factor authentication, whether customers may delete or export their account - is configured in **Settings → Customer settings**. The settings that change what you see in the Customers screens are summarised in [Registration, login and customer privacy](https://grandnode.com/customers-registration-login-and-privacy); the full reference is in [Configuration](https://grandnode.com/docs-configuration).

### Customers in a multi-store installation

A customer record has a **Store** field - the store the customer registered in. Store managers working in the `/store` panel only see and create registered customers of their own store; administrators see everybody. By default an e-mail address is unique across the whole installation, so one person has one account that works in every store. Loyalty points, newsletter subscriptions and orders are kept per store.

### Related

- [Finding and editing customers](https://grandnode.com/customers-manage-customers)
- [Customer groups and access control](https://grandnode.com/customers-customer-groups)
- [Vendor panel](https://grandnode.com/docs-vendor-panel)

- [Web page](https://grandnode.com/customers-overview)