The Customer table contains all of the information about your customers. More specifically, the table is utilized to establish a unique customer ID code and default values for each “ship-to” customer.
The customer ID code can be alphanumeric. For ease of reference, we recommend using the first three or four characters of the customer's name as the beginning of the ID code and numerals for the remaining characters.
Example: LANI00 = LAN Infosystems, Inc. or LAN000 = LAN Infosystems, Inc.
"Bill-to" information can be entered if it is different than the “ship-to" information. If the bill-to and ship-to information is identical, the system will automatically use the ship-to information as the bill-to information; you will not need to enter the bill-to information.
A separate bill-to ID can be created to link multiple ship-to IDs to the same bill-to ID for a consolidated accounts receivable balance.
Example: Grocery store "XYZ" may have many different ship-to IDs but one corporate bill-to ID. Create a corp customer ship-to id and use it as the bill-to id for each different ship-to customers.
The customer ship-to function allows you to create multiple ship-to addresses for the same customer. The ship-to addresses can then be assigned to sales orders as needed, based on the user's addresses setting in User Options. Alternate customer ship-to IDs can be used to create drop off locations for the same customer rather than separate customer IDs for each drop off location. By default, the system uses the customer's ship-to information when entering sales orders.
Use alternate ship-to addresses if you do not need sales reports or margin analysis to be generated at the ship-to customer level. If you do need these reports, you will need to create a customer ID code for each ship-to address.
Example: Chain store number one has 100 stores. If all shipments go to a central warehouse, chain store number one could be considered as one customer with a hundred alternate addresses for deliveries made directly to the stores, if sales or margin reports are not needed for each individual store. If you do need sales or margin reports, you will need 100 customers with one bill-to ID.
Here is another example: If one customer has multiple outside warehouses, an alternate address could be used for each warehouse in order to generate sales and margin reporting at the customer level.
The best time of day and day of the week to call your customers can be entered in the customer table and call sheets can be created based on this information. Call sheets use the primary contact phone, sales contact phone, fax numbers, and call notes.
The Customer table allows customer notes and messages that need to be included on the shipping papers to be entered so that they can be included on each sales order when sales orders are entered. Default carriers by the day of the week can also be entered for each customer, saving time and improving accuracy when entering sales orders.
Customer specific label overrides and Country of Origin settings can be maintained for each customer within the Customer table.
Customer credit information is maintained using Customer Credit. Different statement formats are available from the receivables menu.
The system can be configured to quickly default or capture the source product item attributes from your vendors so that the source product item attributes can be automatically sent to your customers that require Trace Reporting. The system will automatically create the XML Import Trace document needed and based on other settings in Interface Options, send the document to 3rd party Trace reporting service. See Trace Overview for more information.
The following options and tables should be in place before you start to create your customers:
These can be assigned at a later date to the customer via Quick Maintenance or the Import/Export Tables. The Import/Export function can be used to quickly add customers or change several settings across all customers at the same time; the customer quick maintenance screen allows you to quickly make changes to selected fields across all of your customer records.
The customer id's needed to process EDI Transactions for the customer and to automatically upload the XML import trace documents to Trace can be entered for each customer or via Quick Maintenance or the Import/Export Tables . See EDI Overview and Trace Overview for more information
Additionally, default values can also be set within the Customer option. The Customer Defaults function is used to set default values for selected fields when entering new customers.
Note: If the Customer Filtering by Sales Rep field is set to Y (Y=yes), only the customers who are assigned to that sales rep will display. See the Customer fields pull-down menu for Customer field definitions.
When you first enter the Customer option a Select An Option window will appear:
A list of customers will also appear within the Select An Option window if there are less than 1000 customers defined in the system. The following information will display:
Use the Available Actions links below for more information.
| Available Actions | Adding | Changing | Deleting | Contacts | Printing | Quick Maintenance | Importing | Defaults |
Security Required : Receivables - Receivable Inquiry
| See Also | Used In |