How do I keep a linked person, like a lender or a parent, off my customer journey and automatic messages?

Some people are in your contacts only because of a customer: a student's parent, a buyer's lender, a client's insurer. They are not your customers, so they should not go through your customer journey or get its welcome texts. Mark them Not a customer and they are left out.

Churches see their own word here, for example Not a member.

Mark someone Not a customer

1. Open the person's page. The switch is in their Linked people card, so link them to a customer first if you have not already.
2. Turn on Not a customer.
3. Read the question and click to confirm. Their page header now shows a Not a customer label.

What it stops

• Any customer journey they are on stops. Their open journey tasks are cancelled, and they are not put on a journey again by themselves.
• Automatic messages your automations would send them, such as a welcome text or a birthday message, are cancelled, including any already waiting to go out.
• Tasks your automations would create for them are not created either.
• Nobody on your team can start a journey for them while it is on.

Work already done stays: finished tasks, sent messages and their history are not touched.

What it does not stop

• You and your team can still message them yourself from the inbox.
• They can still write to you, and replies to their own chats work as usual.
• Being linked to a customer does not change: they stay in the customer's Linked people card.

Turn it off

Turn the switch off on their page. Someone who was never on a journey joins your customer journey straight away, the same as a new contact. Someone whose journey was stopped is not restarted by itself: to put them back on, open their Journey tab, open its menu and click Start again (see How do I run a journey again for a customer, or put them on a second journey?).

When someone else pays

When a linked person has "Payment requests go to them" turned on, payment requests for this customer go to that person instead of the customer. This covers the payment request email or text, and its reminders, including the reminder for a journey step that is waiting on a payment.

What the person who pays gets:

• The message greets them by their own name and says who it is for, for example "This payment request is for Priya Kumar." A text ends with "(for Priya)".
• The link opens the payment page only. It never opens the customer's journey page.
• Their own choices apply. If they replied STOP to your texts, or have no mobile number on file, the text is not sent, and it is not sent to the customer instead either.
• A first text to them needs them to have texted your business before, or you to have recorded their spoken consent. An email asking for payment, and its payment reminders, are sent even if they turned off marketing emails. A reminder about a journey step that is waiting on a payment follows their email choices.
• A text they receive appears in their own conversation in your inbox, not the customer's.
• If you block the person who pays, their payment requests are cancelled. They are not sent to the customer.

The payment request itself stays on the customer's record, and marking it paid works as usual.

Only one person per customer can get payment requests. Only an admin can turn "Payment requests go to them" on or off, on the customer's Linked people card. It starts on when an admin links someone as "pays for them".

We do not send copies: the customer does not also get the payment request, and nobody else gets a copy of other messages.

Who can do this

Anyone on your team, admin or advisor, as long as your account has task management turned on (the same as linking people).