Adding customers

There are only two ways to get a customer into Distribu:

1. They register themselves at your storefront.
2. You import them from a CSV via the dashboard.

There's no + Add customer button on the dashboard Customers page. That's deliberate — the vast majority of accounts you'll ever have will come from one of those two flows, and forcing a single entry path keeps the data model clean (every customer has a verified email, a real password or none at all, and a clean audit trail).

Path 1 — Self-registration

This is the default for most distributors. You share your storefront URL with prospective customers, and they create their own account.

The storefront URL is:

/store/{your-slug}
/store/{your-slug}/register
/store/{your-slug}/login

Find your slug in Settings → Company. It's the short URL-safe handle for your business.

What the customer sees

At /store/{your-slug}/register they fill in:

On submit:

1. Distribu checks their email isn't already registered with your store.
2. Checks your plan's customer limit. If you've hit it, the form returns:

   "This store isn't accepting new customer sign-ups right now. Please contact the store directly."

3. Securely hashes the password and creates the customer record.
4. Signs them in (sets a 7-day session cookie).
5. Redirects them to your catalog.

You get an email alert — every OWNER and ADMIN on your team is notified that a new customer has signed up, with their name and email.

If you want to restrict sign-ups

There's no on/off toggle for registration right now. If you need to gate access, two options:

• Share the storefront URL privately — it's not discoverable unless someone has the slug. There's no public store directory.
• Import customers ahead of time — see Path 2 below. Their passwords aren't set by import, so they need to use the Set up password link at /store/{your-slug}/setup-password before they can order. That link only works for contacts, though — for primary customer accounts, use the Log in → Forgot password flow.

Path 2 — CSV import

For onboarding — bringing an existing customer list over from another tool. Open it from Customers → Import CSV or go directly to /dashboard/customers/import.

This path creates accounts without passwords. Customers you import this way can't log in until they reset their password from the storefront login screen. Bulk-importing is exactly right for getting your records into the system; it's not a full account provisioning flow.

See CSV import for the three-step preview/apply flow and column reference.

What's NOT supported

Manual add from the dashboard

There's no dashboard button for it. If you need to add one specific customer and don't want to point them at registration, use CSV import with a one-row CSV containing just their email.

Changing a customer's email

The email is the customer's login handle. Changing it from the dashboard isn't supported right now. If a customer's email changes, the cleanest path is to block the old account and have them re-register under the new email.

Deleting a customer

There's no delete action — only block. Blocking keeps all their order history intact while preventing future logins. See Storefront access → Blocking.

We deliberately don't allow customer deletion because their orders are linked to the customer. Deleting a customer would break historical reporting and invoices. If you have a legitimate GDPR delete request, email support@distribu.app — we handle those manually.

Editing a customer

From the customer detail page (/dashboard/customers/{id}) you can edit:

• Notes — up to 2000 chars. Free-form, customer can't see these.
• Credit limit — any positive number with up to 2 decimal places, or blank for "no limit". This is for your records only — Distribu does not block orders when a customer would exceed it.

The status toggle in the page header flips ACTIVE ↔ BLOCKED. See Storefront access for what that means in practice.

Next: CSV import.