Customer Maintenance

Setup Customer Maintenance

Purpose:

From here you can add, modify or delete customers. These form allows you to store information that is specific to each customer. The information of this for is vital to the well functioning of the system. Elements like Customer Id/Description, Credit Limit, Payment Terms, Customer Type, Tax Group, Sales Account, Salesperson, Discount %, Cost Markup %, Shipping Method, Discount Level and Route Information are used in the Sales Order, Invoicing, and Routing processes. Im addition to this you can also setup Multiple Ship To Addresses, get a lookup of the transaction history or the customer financial status. Information in this form is updated Real Time.

Usage:

1- Customer ID and Description. Either type a new customer ID, or select from the existing set using the lookup. The customer Id cannot contain apostrophes and it must be a unique identifier. Letters and Numbers are admissible. However, you should decide for uniform ID’s so they can be remembered easily.

2- Billing Information. Type the name, city, state, address, etc.

3- Tax Id Number. This is for customers who are exempt from taxes. If the customer has a taxpayer ID number (also known as resale number), enter it here.

4- Average Days to pay. This field is updated whenever a payment from this customer is received. When you create a new customer this field should be in Zero. This feature is very helpful when deciding what credit limit and/or payment terms a customer should have

5- Credit limit. Enter the maximum amount of credit you will allow this customer. For unlimited credit, enter 0 in this field. For no credit, enter a small number like $0.01.

6- Payment Terms. Choose a default set of payment terms from the drop down list. These payment terms are defined during company setup, as described in Lists -- Payment Terms.

7- Customer Type. Select a customer type from the dropdown list to assign it to this customer. This action give a price list to this customer (See Setup Customer Types)

8- Tax Group. This is the default tax group to assign to the customer. This comes from the tax groups you set up on the Setup Sales Tax.

9- GL Sales Account. Enter an account to which sales to this customer will be posted. This accounts comes by default from the Company Sales Setup when a new Customer is created.
Note: if the Default Sales Account in the preferences is not set to Customer, then the Sales Account on the Customer card will be ignored. Instead the Sales Account on the item will be used.

10- Salesperson. Choose a default employee to serve as a salesperson to this customer. You can only select employees who are marked as salespeople. (See Employee setup)

11- Discount % This is the standard amount by which to discount invoices to this customer.

12- Cost Markup % if you want to sell all items to a customer at a fixed percentage margin over Real Cost, then you should enter that figure in here. All Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoices to this customer will overlook the price list and use this percentage amount when calculating the final price. That of course can be overwritten in the transactions as well to default to regular price or the customer price list.

13- Statements and/or Finance Charge. If you want the customer to receive printed Statements, then check the Statements option. If you want the customer to be charged for past due invoices, then check the Finance Charges option.

14- Shipping Method. Select the Customer Preferred Shipping Method. This field is defaulted to the company default shipping method when a new customer is created. (See Setup Shipping Methods, Company Sales Setup)

15- Discount Level. Select the Default Discount Level For this customer from the Dropdown list.(See Setup Customer Discount Levels)

16- Truck. Select the Default truck for this customer. (See Trucks Setup)

17- Customer Bank Name. This is an Optional Field. However, if you have this information you are encouraged to enter it to track the checks received from different banks.

18- Consolidate. By clicking in this check box this customer will be the consolidated contact for all customers in that customer group. The system will not let you have more that one “consolidate” customer within a price list. In addition to that, you can print a consolidated statement for the entire customer Group when you select this customer (See Statement Printing)

19- Route Configuration. In order to setup this customer route there are some fields that should be filled. First of all, you need to enter the Route Code. Furthermore, The route order field has to be filled to reflect what order of delivery has this customer in the selected route. Furthermore, if the customer has a fixed route, you need to select what days of the Week (M-F) and what weeks of the month (1-5) they have to be visited as part of the delivery route. This information will be vital when designing the daily trip.

20- Ship-to Addresses. See the Ship To form for information on editing Shipping addresses.

21- Transactions. By Clicking in this button the system will open a lookup of all transactions related to this customer in the “Days Back” Period of the company(See Company Setup). Those transactions are ordered by Date and the list is updated real time as the transactions get posted.

22- Financials. See the Customer Financial Form for a Description of this Feature

23- Beg Invoices. See the Beginning Balances form for information on editing beginning balances.

24- Beg Receipts. See the Beginning Receipts form for information on editing beginning balances.