Contacts vs Customers vs Vendors Explained

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Introduction

In Odoo, the Contacts app is your central hub for managing everyone your business interacts with—customers, vendors, and other partners. Understanding the difference between contacts, customers, and vendors helps you keep your data clean and your workflows efficient. 

This guide explains how these roles work together in Odoo and how to manage them effectively for your UK-based business. 

Step-by-step Instructions

1. What is a Contact?

  • A Contact is any individual or company stored in the Contacts app.
  • A Contact is any individual or company stored in the Contacts app.
  • You can assign tags, titles, industries, and more to help categorise them.

2. What is a Customer in Odoo?

  • A Customer is a contact that you sell to.
  • When you create a Sales Order, Quotation, or Invoice for a contact, they become a customer
  • Under the contact record, you’ll find smart buttons for Sales, Subscriptions, Invoices, and more.

3. What is a Vendor (or Supplier) in Odoo?

  • A Vendor is a contact that you buy from.
  • When you create a Purchase Order, Bill, or Receipt, the contact is marked as a vendor.
  • On the contact form, smart buttons will show Bills, Purchase Orders, and Receipts.

4. Can a Contact Be Both a Customer and a Vendor?

  • Yes! Odoo lets you manage hybrid relationships easily.
  • A single contact can appear in both Sales and Purchase workflows.
  • This is ideal for B2B businesses, distributors, and service exchanges.

5. How to Identify the Contact Type

  • Go to the Sales & Purchases tab on a contact form.
  • Tick the checkbox for Is a customer or Is a Vendor (or both).
  • This enables the appropriate fields and smart buttons.

6. Tracking Transactions

Use smart buttons to view:
  • Sales Orders for customers
  • Purchase Orders and Vendor Bills for vendors
  • Partner Ledger, Invoices, or Receipts

7. Partner Assignment

  • Includes options like Geolocation, Partner Review, and Partner Activation (used with the Resellers app).

8. Membership Management

  • With the Membership app, go to the Membership tab.
  • Click Buy Membership or tick Free Member.

9. Smart Buttons

Smart buttons appear at the top of the form, giving you quick access to related information: 

  • Opportunities (CRM)
  • Meetings, Sales, Invoices, Purchases, and more
  • Go to Website if the contact is published online

10. Archive or Unarchive a Contact

  • Click Action > Archive to hide a contact.
  • To bring them back, click Action > Unarchive.

Tips

  • Use descriptive Tags to filter contacts by type.
  • Apply Fiscal Positions or Payment Terms specific to customers or vendors.
  • Keep addresses and communication details up to date to avoid errors
  • Add internal notes to highlight special terms or contact preferences.
  • Use multi-company or multi-website settings to segment your contact visibility.

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