Use this article when your tenant is new and you want estimators to run practice quotes without touching real customer pricing. After this you will have one test customer record that appears in Manage estimates for every user, with estimation enabled and a clear name so it cannot be confused with a live account.
Before you begin
Required role: GelatoConnect customer admin (this is the platform role that owns the customer record, not the Estimator role).
Decide on the test-customer naming convention with finance and sales so the record is easy to recognise in Manage estimates.
Steps
1. Create or open the test customer record
Open the Customers area in GelatoConnect. Either create a new customer or open the customer record you have designated as the test record. Use a name that is obviously non-production. Fill in the fields below.
Identification
Customer name — a name that signals "training" or "test", for example
Internal Test - Estimator Training. This is the name that shows up in the Create new estimate customer picker, so it should sort near the top alphabetically and be impossible to mistake for a live account.Customer code or external ID — any unique identifier your shop uses for internal records. Tag it with a prefix like
TEST-so finance can filter test orders out of reports.
Contact details
Address fields, phone, email — fill the minimum that GelatoConnect requires to save. Use an internal address (the shop's own) so any auto-generated quote letter has valid values.
VAT or tax identifier — use your shop's own identifier or a clearly synthetic value (for example
TEST-VAT-00). Do not leave it blank if your tenant requires it.
Jobs and Estimations
Estimation Process — toggle this on. This is the flag that makes the customer record appear in the Create new estimate customer picker. Without it, no one will be able to start an estimate against this record.
Pricing context
Price list — pick a sandbox or training price list if your tenant has one. If finance has not created a separate list, use the default price list, but flag with finance that any quotes against this customer should not be sent externally.
Rebate — leave the rebate fields blank or set to zero. Customer-specific rebates still apply to test customers, and a stray rebate on the test record skews early validation quotes.
Save the customer record.
2. Validate the test customer is selectable
Open Manage estimates in GelatoConnect. Select Create new estimate. In the customer picker, search for the test customer name. The record appears in the dropdown.
Select the test customer. Pick any template product category. Run Calculate on the AI-populated fields. The quote completes and the customer name in the header matches the test record.
3. Communicate the test customer to the team
Send the test customer name and intended use to every estimator on the tenant. Tell them: this is the customer record to use for first quotes, training, and configuration validation. Do not send quote letters against this record to anyone outside the implementation team.
Things to know
Customer-specific pricing rules and rebates still apply to the test customer. If your shop has tenant-wide rebates, those will appear on test quotes — clear them on the test customer record or use a dedicated test price list so practice quotes show clean numbers.
The Estimation Process toggle is the single gate that controls visibility in the estimate customer picker. If a colleague says they cannot find the test customer when starting a new estimate, the toggle is the first thing to check.
This article covers internal onboarding only. Visitor and self-quote customer setup is a separate workflow.