How do I delete a client?
Short answerArchive the client instead of deleting unless the record is a duplicate or the person asked for erasure. Deleting wipes visit history, notes, and invoice links you may need for taxes or a dispute. Export the record, cancel future visits, then archive or delete.
The explanation
A client record is more than a name and phone number. It holds past visits, what you charged, gate codes, pet notes, and every message. Tax questions, warranty claims, and chargebacks all reach back to that history, sometimes a year or more later.
Archiving hides the person from search and from the calendar while keeping the history intact. That covers the usual reasons owners want someone gone: they moved, they stopped paying, or you dropped the route. Delete only when two records describe the same person, or when the customer asks you in writing to erase their data.
Before any removal, cancel or reassign every future visit and any recurring plan, or the schedule will keep a ghost stop. Then check for an unpaid invoice. A record with a balance should be archived, never deleted.
Steps
- Export the customer list or that one record to a spreadsheet so you hold a copy outside the software.
- Open the client and cancel every future visit and any recurring plan attached to them.
- Check for unpaid invoices and settle or write off the balance before touching the record.
- Archive the client. Use delete only for a true duplicate or a written erasure request.
What to watch for
- Deleting a client who still has an open invoice, which orphans the payment history.
- Forgetting the recurring plan, which leaves phantom stops on a crew route.
How Apex does it
In progress
Part of this is built. The rest is not. Status as of 2026-10-07; the badge shows the least-built feature involved.
Apex keeps one customer record with notes and activity history. A CSV export of customers is part of the design, and duplicate detection with merge is designed so a repeat entry gets combined with the original instead of erased.
- LD01Customer database (name, phone, email, address)(Built)
- LD13Notes and activity history per customer(Built)
- LD16Customer export (CSV) at any time(In progress)
- LD11Duplicate customer detection and merge(Rolling out)
Apex Flow Scheduler is in early access. See how we label status.
Where this question comes from: owners type it, or a close variant, into search boxes. It was returned by public search suggestions (Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo) when we collected them on 2026-10-06; the exact phrase seen was “how to delete client?”. We do not have search volumes.