Customer Groups
How Customer Groups Work
Access requirements. You'll need view access to the "Customers" permission to see Customer groups, and edit access to create, edit, or delete one.
Groups are either automatic or managed by hand — chosen once, at creation. An automatic group fills itself in based on rules you set (spend, order count, and similar). A managed group only gets members you add yourself.
Automatic membership isn't instant. Recalculating who belongs runs as a background job — right after you create or edit an automatic group's criteria, its member list may take a moment to catch up.
A group with every automatic criterion left at zero applies to literally every customer. There's no separate "everyone" option — leaving spend, order count, loyalty points, and membership age all at their defaults (and not requiring a loyalty program) makes the group match your entire customer base.
Tax exemption is a manually-managed-only setting, and only on the group's Edit page. It doesn't appear when you're first creating a group, and it isn't available on automatic groups at all — see "Making a Group Tax-Exempt" below.
Creating a group is what makes it available elsewhere. Once a group exists, you can pick it as a condition on a discount, a sale, or a customer-group price level — creating the group here is the prerequisite for all three; this guide covers creating and managing the group itself, not those other setups.
Deleting a group is permanent. There's no deactivate option — only delete, and it can't be undone.
Where to Access Each Feature
To… | Go to |
See or manage all customer groups | Customers → Customer groups |
Add customers to a managed group | Customer groups → open a group → "Add customers" |
Assign a customer to groups from their own record | All customers → open the customer → "Managed customer groups" |
Creating a Customer Group
Step 1
Click on "Customers" in the left-menu bar, then click on "Customer groups."
Step 2
Click "New Group."
Step 3
Enter a "Name."
Step 4
Decide how membership should work. Leave "Managed automatically" off to add customers yourself, or turn it on and fill in the criteria that apply — "Loyalty program required," "Minimum spend," "Minimum orders," "Minimum days since joining," and "Minimum loyalty points." A customer only joins once they meet every criterion you set.
Step 5
Click "Save."
Adding Customers to a Managed Group
Skip this section if the group is automatic — its members fill in on their own.
Step 6
Open the Customer from the "All Customers" list and click "Quick Edit."
Step 7
Search by name, email, or phone, then check the customers to add — or use "select all" to add everyone matching your current search — and click "Add to group."
Step 8
To remove someone later, find them in the group's member list and delete their row.
Note: you can also assign groups from a customer's own record instead — open the customer from "All customers," and use "Managed customer groups" in their edit panel. That field replaces the customer's whole set of managed-group memberships each time you save it, rather than adding to it — so it's not the field to use if you only want to add one more group without touching the others they're already in.
Making a Group Tax-Exempt
Step 9
Open a managed (not automatic) group from the "Customer groups" list — this option isn't available on a group you're still creating for the first time; save it, then come back in.
Step 10
Toggle "Tax exempt" on.
Important: turning this on exempts the customer's register sales from tax, and it also carries over to any order you build yourself in Customer Orders — attach a member of the group and that order's "Tax exempt" toggle comes on by itself, though you can still switch it off if that one order should be taxed.
Other Things You Can Do
See what's using a group — a group's own page has read-only "Discounts" and "Sales" tabs listing any promotions or sales that reference it.
Use a group for tiered pricing — set up a customer-group price level from the pricing rules area, selecting this group as the condition, so its members automatically get a different price.
Use a group as a discount condition — when building a discount, its "Limited to customer groups" field can restrict the discount to members of this group.
Delete a group — from the "Customer groups" list, click "Delete" and confirm. This is permanent: it removes the group, its members, and any price level built on it. A discount that referenced the group stops showing it as a condition, but the discount itself isn't cleaned up automatically — check any discounts or sales that used to reference a deleted group to make sure they still behave the way you expect.
Troubleshooting
The Tax exempt switch isn't showing when you edit a group: it only appears on managed groups, and only after the group has already been saved once — save it first if you're still on the "New Group" screen, then reopen it. It also never appears on an automatic group.
A customer isn't automatically joining a group you set up: membership recalculates in the background, so allow a short delay — but also double-check the customer actually meets every criterion you set, since falling short on even one (like loyalty points) keeps them out.
No one is ever joining a group with a loyalty-based criterion: if your account doesn't have a loyalty program running, no customer has a loyalty account to check against — "Loyalty program required" or a "Minimum loyalty points" threshold will never be met by anyone. Drop those criteria if you're not using loyalty.
A customer's own Tax exempt switch is replaced with a note instead of a toggle: they're exempt because of a group they belong to, not their own individual setting — remove them from that group, or turn off "Tax exempt" on the group itself, if you need to change it.
You deleted a group that was tied to a discount or sale, and something looks off: deleting a group doesn't automatically clean up every place it was referenced. Review any discounts or sales that used it and adjust them directly rather than assuming the deletion untangled everything.