Clients & suppliers
One contact directory for customers and suppliers, with Estonian Business Register lookup by registry code and EU VAT number verification against VIES.
Arvello keeps a single contact directory: the companies and people you invoice, and the ones who invoice you. A contact can be a customer, a supplier, or both — one record either way, so a company you both sell to and buy from is never entered twice.
You meet the same directory in different places: Sales → Clients shows contacts marked as customers, and Expenses → Suppliers lists the ones who bill you. A client who is also a supplier shows a note to that effect, with a link across to the supplier profile.
Adding a contact
For Estonian companies, the quickest route is the registry lookup: enter the 8-digit registry code (registrikood — the company's number in the äriregister, Estonia's Business Register) or start typing the company name, and Arvello fills in the company details. Everyone else is entered manually.
A contact record holds:
| Section | Fields |
|---|---|
| Basic information | Name, registry code, VAT number, customer/supplier type |
| Contact details | Email, phone, website |
| Address | Two address lines, city, postal code, country |
| Bank details | IBAN (or account number and sort code), bank name, BIC/SWIFT |
| Invoice defaults | Payment terms in days, default currency, default tax code, invoice language |
Two fields earn their keep at invoicing time:
- Email — needed for sending invoices by email; Arvello warns you if a customer has none.
- VAT number — entered with its country prefix (for example EE123456789). Verify VAT checks it against VIES, the EU's VAT number validation service, and shows the result as Valid, Invalid or Unverified. A valid EU VAT number is what triggers the reverse-charge default on invoices to EU businesses.
The country and VAT number together decide which tax code new invoice lines default to — details in VAT rates & tax codes.
Suppliers also carry a default expense category, which pre-fills when you create expenses from them. And if a contact has an Estonian registry code, Arvello checks the Peppol Directory (Peppol being the pan-European e-invoicing network) and badges contacts who accept e-invoices — see E-invoices & Peppol.
How contacts link to invoices
Opening a contact gives you three tabs: Overview (the record, VAT status and e-invoicing badge), Invoices and Activity (a log of changes to the record).
The Invoices tab is where the directory pays off. A client's profile lists every sales invoice you have issued to them, with statuses and totals; a supplier's profile in the Expenses area does the same for purchase invoices received from them. The clients list also shows each client's outstanding balance, so the directory doubles as a quick who-owes-what.
💡Set defaults once, save time on every invoice
Payment terms, currency, tax code and invoice language set on the contact are applied automatically to every new invoice for that contact — one decision instead of one per invoice.
Key Takeaways
- 1One directory serves invoicing and expenses; a contact can be customer, supplier or both
- 2Estonian companies auto-fill from the Business Register by registry code
- 3VAT numbers verify against VIES and drive the default tax code on invoice lines
- 4Contact defaults — terms, currency, tax code, language — pre-fill every new invoice