# Clients > The client record, how mail links to a client, open money, and what Sydbar may use about them. Source: https://sydbar.app/docs/clients Open **Clients** in the side rail for every client of the business, with open money at the top. ## The client record - **Contact and billing details.** Billing is confirmed before it goes on an invoice. **Edit client** changes them. - **Linked addresses.** Mail from these addresses links to the client automatically. - **Team.** The people you work with there. See [Client team](/docs/client-team). - **History.** Every conversation and invoice with this client. - **Deal.** The stage, open money and what's still to invoice. See [Deal stages and payments](/docs/deal-stages). - **Project.** Calls, the scope of work, the portal link, and GitHub or Linear. See [The agency loop](/docs/agency-loop). ## Catch up on a client you're mid-project with A client who joins Sydbar partway through a project has months of mail behind them, most of it older than the first import reached. On the client page, **Catch up** asks the mailbox for everything with their people, sent and archived included, and adds it to the client's history. 1. Press **Catch up** and pick the people: every address Sydbar knows for the client (contact, billing, linked addresses, their team) is listed, and **Everyone at @theircompany.com** when they have a company domain. Add other addresses if you know them. 2. Press **Bring in their history**. Conversations arrive newest first, a page at a time, up to 400 of them. Only conversations with the client come in; they arrive read and out of the way unless they're still in your inbox, and the documents that came with them are kept (see **Documents** below). 3. The addresses and domain are remembered, so mail from them joins the history from here on. The card shows how far back the history goes when it's done. Nothing is sent, and nothing changes in your mailbox. Sample clients have no mailbox history to bring in. ## Ask about a client **Ask Sydbar**, at the top of the client page, opens a conversation with Sydbar about that client, full screen: the rail collapses and everything else steps aside, with the client's name at the top. Esc brings you back. Ask anything: where things stand, what was agreed on price and terms, what's been paid, what the client asked that hasn't been answered, what the last call covered. Sydbar reads the record as you watch (each read shows in the conversation) and answers with its sources: the date and subject of an email, a document's name, a call. It reads only this client's mail, documents, call transcripts, scope, invoices and repo. When something should change in the record, Sydbar proposes it as a card: the deal stage, a milestone's progress, a follow-up on a thread, a sent invoice marked paid, a new scope draft, a new invoice. **Apply** runs the same change you'd make by hand; **Dismiss** leaves it. Nothing changes, and nothing is sent, until you apply a card. **New conversation** starts afresh; the old one stays in the record. ## Where things stand **Work out where things stand** (at the top of the client page) has Sydbar read everything it has with the client (mail, the documents in it, call transcripts, invoices, and the GitHub or Linear state) and propose where the project is: - **Milestones.** Each milestone of the scope, and work the mail names that the scope doesn't, with the state the evidence shows: not started, in progress, delivered, invoiced or paid. **Set … on the scope** applies it to the confirmed scope; invoiced and paid come from the invoices themselves. - **Money.** Invoiced, paid and outstanding, only from stated amounts, with notes on what the figures rest on. - **Left hanging.** Client questions without an answer, promises not yet kept, payments not confirmed, decisions waited on. **Follow up tomorrow** puts the thread back at the top of Needs you tomorrow. - **Pace.** When a GitHub repo or Linear project is linked, how fast work has been finishing over the last four weeks, when each remaining milestone lands at that pace, and how that compares with the dates the scope or the mail promised. (Dates come from the next read of the repo after this feature arrived.) - **Next** and **To confirm.** Every line shows the quotes it rests on and which source they came from; a quote the source doesn't contain word for word is marked. Nothing changes until you apply a line. **Update** reads everything again. For a client you joined mid-project, run **Catch up** first so the whole history is read. ## Documents Proposals, scopes of work, contracts and quotes that arrive as PDF, Word or text files are kept with their message and listed under **Documents** on the client page, newest first, with a link to open each one. Sydbar reads their text and marks the ones that read like the agreement (**Looks like the agreement**): those are what the scope of work is drafted from first. A scan or a protected file is kept but marked **Not readable**. Only documents in conversations with a client, or ones you've written in, are kept. Images, calendar invites and signature files never are. ## Open money The Clients page shows **Open money**: the total of sent invoices not marked paid, with how many and how much is overdue. Sample invoices are counted separately and labelled. ## Email a client **Email** opens a new message in the business's Gmail account; replies come back into Sydbar. To write to several people at the client at once, use **Email the team**. ## Delete a client At the bottom of a client page, **Delete** removes that client and everything Sydbar keeps for them: conversations, invoices and files, bookings, the scope, the portal and context. Type the client’s name to confirm. The mailbox connection stays, and the mail stays in the mailbox. This can’t be undone. Sample clients can also be removed together from **Settings → Data → Remove demo data**. Clients marked demo start ticked. A client is listed there when it is marked demo, or when a stored contact uses an example address. A sample invoice with no client, or a demo-flagged invoice on a sample client, can be ticked there too. Type DELETE DEMO to confirm. An invoice on a live client stays with that client. ## What Sydbar uses about a client When drafting for a client, Sydbar uses the conversation, the client's details and the confirmed context: the business context plus the client's confirmed scope of work, saved as `scope-of-work.md`. Proposed sources are never used.