Zenzel CRM

Run your whole client billing workflow without leaving VS Code — customers, quotes, invoices, payments, and employees, all in one place.

Zenzel CRM turns your editor into a lightweight business hub. Every record lives in a local database on your machine — no account, no server, no subscription. Open a module from the sidebar, and it opens right in the editor area like any other tab.

What you can do

Customers — Keep a clean directory of every client: contact info, billing address, and notes, with instant search.

Quotes — Build itemized quotes in seconds, track their status (draft, sent, accepted, declined), and convert an accepted quote into an invoice with one click — line items, tax, and discounts all carry over automatically.

Invoices — Create polished invoices with line items, tax, and discounts calculated live as you type. Track status from draft through paid, and see the outstanding balance on every invoice at a glance.

Payments — Record payments against any open invoice. Balances and statuses update automatically — no manual bookkeeping.

Employees — A simple staff directory with titles, departments, and status, right alongside your client data.

Export invoices and quotes your way

Every invoice and quote can be exported as:

• PDF — ready to email, with your company details, line items, and totals formatted cleanly.
• Word document (.docx) — fully editable, opens in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice.
• Custom HTML — design your own invoice look and feel. Zenzel CRM ships with two polished starter styles, and includes a built-in prompt you can hand to ChatGPT or Claude to generate new styles — complete with line-item tables, an hours column for time-based billing, and colorful tag pills. Paste the result in, and it's ready to use.

Time tracking, meet invoicing

If you use Zenzel Time to track your hours, Zenzel CRM can pull that data straight into billing. There are two ways in, and both bill from the same rules.

Generate Invoice (all on one screen)

Generate Invoice, next to New Invoice on the Invoices list, opens a single form: load a Zenzel Time backup, set the date range (a preset or an exact start and end date), and every entry that falls inside it appears in a table with the date, task, tracked vs. billable time, rate, and amount. Tick the ones you want, adjust the billing increment or the line-item layout, fill in the customer and invoice dates, and the running total updates as you go. Entries inside the range that can't be billed are still listed, greyed out and labelled — already invoiced or deleted in tracker — so an empty-looking week is never a mystery. A counter under the range says exactly how many entries fell outside it.

Import Time Data (step by step)

The Import Time Data... command walks the same import one prompt at a time, which is handy when you want to consider each entry on its own:

1. Pick the date range to bill — this month, last month, the last 7 or 30 days, everything in the backup, or a custom start and end date.
2. Confirm the billing increment. If the backup carries a rounding setting from the time tracker, that wins; otherwise the Round imported time up to value in Company Settings applies. Each entry is rounded up to the next increment, so with 15-minute billing a 1-minute entry bills 15 minutes. You can override the increment for a single import.
3. Review each entry one at a time — you see the date, task, tracked vs. billable time, and the amount, then include it, skip it, include everything remaining, stop and invoice what you have approved, or cancel outright.
4. Set the invoice details — which customer to bill (matched from the project name or picked from your list), invoice date, due date, tax rate, and whether the invoice reads as one line per time entry or one line per task.

Either way, billed entries are recorded by ID, so re-running the import never bills the same time twice — and anything you skipped stays available for a later invoice. Delete the invoice and its time comes straight back, ready to bill again. Both paths create a draft invoice, so nothing is final until you review it.

E-mailing invoices, quotes, and receipts

Fill in your SMTP host, port, security (STARTTLS / SSL-TLS / none), username, and From address under Company Settings, then use the envelope button on any invoice, quote, or payment to send it with its PDF attached.

• Your password is stored in VS Code's secret storage (the OS keychain) — never in the CRM database, and never in a backup file. Set it with Zenzel CRM: Set SMTP Password.
• Test Connection proves the settings work without sending anything; Compose Test E-mail sends a message to yourself.
• Nothing is ever sent without you seeing it first. Every message opens in a review panel showing the exact recipients, subject, body, and attachments — all editable — and pressing Send then requires confirming an authorization dialog that names the recipients one final time.

Your data, backed up

Choose a backup folder once, and Zenzel CRM keeps a rolling set of snapshots there automatically (or on demand with a single command) — handy for syncing to a cloud drive or simply sleeping easier. Older snapshots are pruned automatically so the folder never grows out of control.

Getting started

1. Install the extension and click the Zenzel CRM icon in the Activity Bar.
2. Open Company Settings and fill in your business details — they appear on every invoice and quote.
3. Add your first customer, then create a quote or invoice.
4. Export it as a PDF, Word document, or your own custom HTML design.

That's it — everything is stored locally and ready whenever you open VS Code.