Why does the Company field on Problem ticket use a reference qualifier "customer=true"?

[jahnavi_bitra]

Hi Community,

I've been looking into the Company field on the Problem form and noticed something I'd like to understand better.

The Company field is a reference field pointing to the core_company table, and it has a reference qualifier preset with the condition customer=true. This means the dropdown only shows companies where the "Customer" flag is checked to true.

What is the reasoning behind filtering the Company field to only show companies where customer=true? Is this an OOTB (out-of-the-box) design decision by ServiceNow, and if so, what's the intended use case?

[Huynh Loc]

Hi @jahnavi_bitra ,

Yes — this behavior is an out‑of‑the‑box (OOTB) ServiceNow design decision.

The Company field is intentionally filtered with customer = true to ensure that ITSM records (such as Incident, Problem, and Change) are associated only with organizations that actively receive IT services, rather than internal vendors, manufacturers, or third‑party providers.

For additional context and details, please refer to the following ServiceNow Community post:
https://www.servicenow.com/community/servicenow-ai-platform-forum/company-customer-field-intended-us...

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[Tanushree Maiti]

The core_company table stores various organization types. By using a reference qualifier, ServiceNow enforces that only legitimate "Customer" records are associated with Problem records that might impact them.
It prevents users from accidentally associating a vendor (e.g., Apple or Microsoft) or internal business unit with a customer-facing problem

Refer: 

KB0692651 The lookup list for the Company field on an incident form show no matches. 

https://www.servicenow.com/community/servicenow-ai-platform-forum/company-customer-field-intended-us....