Erasing a customer's personal data

Sometimes a customer asks you to delete everything you hold about them. Privacy laws such as GDPR and the California privacy rules give people that right, with exceptions for records a business has to keep. FSM Navigator handles both halves for you: it removes the customer's personal details from your account and keeps your invoices, payments and signed paperwork intact for tax and accounting.

This is different from removing a customer. Removing a customer only hides them from your active list, and you can restore them later. Erasing is permanent: the name, contact details and addresses are gone and the customer can't be restored.

Who can erase a customer

• Only an Owner can erase a customer.
• It works on the website only. The mobile app doesn't offer it, and you can't start it while you're viewing someone else's account.
• If you'd rather not do it yourself, contact FSM Navigator support. Our team can erase the customer on your behalf, and you still get the receipt.

If you haven't signed in recently, FSM Navigator asks you to confirm it's you (with your passkey, authenticator code, password or an emailed code) before the erasure starts.

Before you start: settle open items

You can't erase a customer while they still have open business with you. FSM Navigator checks for these and tells you which ones are in the way:

Erasing never closes, voids or changes an invoice for you. Invoices are your financial records, so the decision about each one stays with you.

Erase the customer

1. Open the customer's detail page.
2. In the Customer Information card, click Erase personal data.
3. Read the summary of what will be erased and what will be kept.
4. Type the customer's number (shown as Customer ID on the page) to confirm. If the customer doesn't have a number yet, give them one first by editing the customer.
5. Click Erase and confirm it's you when asked.

The customer disappears from your lists at once. The rest of the work runs in the background, usually within a few minutes. You can close the window; the status in the dialog only shows you how far it has got.

When it finishes, FSM Navigator emails a receipt to the Owner who asked for it (or to every Owner, if our support team ran it for you). The receipt lists what was erased and what was kept, so you can tell the customer their request is complete. Nothing is sent to the customer's own address, because that's one of the things being erased.

What is erased

• The customer record: name, email and phone. The record now reads "Erased customer" followed by the customer number.
• Addresses: street details are removed from every location. The state and ZIP are kept, because sales tax depends on them.
• Notes and free text: anywhere the customer's name, email, phone or address appears in notes, job descriptions, quotes, work orders and similar text, it's replaced with [removed].
• Photos and files: job photos, and work-order files marked as photos or "other", are deleted.
• Customer portal access: the customer's portal login for your company is removed. If the same person also uses the portal for another business on FSM Navigator, their access there isn't touched.
• Email and text history: their email address and phone numbers are removed from your sending records, and those numbers won't be texted again.
• Notifications about the customer, saved payment details held with Stripe, and their entries in search.

What is kept, and why

Some records have to stay, either because the law requires you to keep them or because you may need them to settle a claim.

• Invoices and payments stay exactly as they were: same amounts, same status. Everyday views and downloads now show the erased name instead of the customer's.
• A sealed copy of each invoice as it was issued, with the customer's original name and address, is kept for 7 years from the invoice date and then deleted automatically. It's stored encrypted and separately from your everyday records. Only an Owner can open it, from the invoice list, and every view is recorded in your activity history.
• Jobs, quotes and work orders stay in your records with the customer's details removed. Signed documents, signatures and the answers on signed forms are kept as proof of what was agreed.
• Your activity history is kept for security and archived after 36 months.
• Backups still hold a copy until they rotate out under your backup settings.

Outside FSM Navigator

• QuickBooks: if you sync with QuickBooks, update or remove the customer there yourself. FSM Navigator doesn't change your QuickBooks records.
• Stripe keeps its own record of past charges.
• Copies you already have, such as downloaded exports, emails in your own mailbox and printed papers, are outside FSM Navigator. Delete those too.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Managing customers
• Customer details
• Customer service portal