These are the organizations you sell products and services to. They are maintained in the FILES|Customer menu or from the Customers button in the toolbar. All sales orders and forms management transactions must be assigned a valid Customer ID.
WHY CAN’T I DELETE A CUSTOMER? You may not delete a Customer which is linked to any of the following types of records in Simple Accounting: Products, Sales Orders, Contacts, F/M Counts & Releases, Purchase Orders and Requests For Quotes. So before you can delete a Customer, you must delete or void any of these types of linked transactions and re-assign any Products linked with the Customer to another Customer ID. Note: Using Security Extensions you can, however, change one ID to another.
You will not be allowed to delete a customer if there are any transactions requiring this customer. For example, you cannot delete a customer for which sales orders have been entered.
Special Toolbar Buttons
Like several important browse boxes in Simple Accounting, the Customer Browse has it’s own Toolbar. Remember that this Toolbar is context sensitive. Many of the buttons perform the same functions as those on the Main Toolbar, but the apply only to that Customer.
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[Sites] | Each customer has a single Bill To address, which by default is the shipping address. However, every customer can be also assigned an unlimited number of Alternate Shipping Addresses (SITES) which are accessed from the Sitesbutton at the top of the Customer Browse. Simple Accounting makes no internal distinction between a Ship To Address and a Ship From Address. Each is simply a location or Site. It is quite possible to have a sales order where one transfers product from one customer Ship To Address then ship it to another of the customers Ship To Addresses (as would happen in an intra-company transfer), which is why we prefer the term Site which simply means a place that products may be delivered to, shipped from, stored at, or used by. |
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[Contacts] | Each customer may be linked to an unlimited number of contacts. Contacts entered here are automatically linked to the selected Customer. HOW CUSTOMERS AND CONTACTS ARE RELATED
It is important to remember that although most of the data entry fields for each customer are duplicated in a contact record they are not the same, and that although information entered into a contact record can update the corresponding fields in the customer record, the reverse is not true -information from the customer file does not update contact records, even if they are linked together. For example, let’s say you have several contacts within the same firm. The firm becomes a customer so you convert one of the contacts to a customer and assign the rest to that Customer ID as described in the FILES|Contacts section. Now lets suppose that the customer moves their offices to a new location and you change the address in the customer record. The address of each contact linked to that customer will remain unchanged -you must manually update the address of each contact. Once a customer and a contact are linked together, they can share the same activities, and key data between them such as LAST MAIL DATE and LAST CALL DATE so you can be certain that you are looking at the most recent activity for the customer whether it was entered directly into the customer record, or through one of its linked contacts. This can help you avoid duplicate mailings where only one copy of a letter should be mailed to a company regardless of how many contacts you have within the organization. If there are no contacts linked to a new customer, Simple Accounting asks you if you would like it to create one before saving. You can use drag-and-drop from the Customers browse to the Contacts browse to either automatically create a linked contact, or to automatically update the contacts address from the customers. If you drop the customer onto a linked contact, you are asked if you would like to update the address. If you drop to another contact record, you are asked if you would like to create a new linked contact. |
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[Orders] | View sales orders and open invoices for this customer. |
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[Item History] | View line item history from sales orders for this customer, sorted by Product ID. |
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[Payments] | View payments and credits for this customer. |
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[Find] | Normally, you can search for a customer record by typing the first few characters of the customer name. the browse will automatically scroll to the nearest match as you type. If you dont know the customers name, you can press the [Find] button and locate a record using the Query Window. In the Query Window you enter some field you do know about the customer, such as their phone number and the browse will immediately jump to the nearest match. If this is still not the right record, you can press the button again (notice that it has changed to [Find Again] and it will jump to the next match. |
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This button brings up a menu which lets you perform the following functions:
The Label option also allows you to print labels for the Alternate Shipping Addresses assigned to each customer. So for example, if you select Current from Print Options, you will print one label for every Alternate Shipping Address assigned to the currently selected customer.
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Special Keystrokes
Right clicking on this browse displays a menu of other, less often-used functions.
| View Totals | View Aging and Sales Totals for the selected Customer. |
| View Notes | View/Edit Billing and Sales Notes for the selected Customer. |
| Activities | View Activities for all Contacts linked to the selected Customer. |
| *F/M Periods | Manage Forms Management Periods for the selected Customer. |
| **On Line Options | Set various On-Line Ordering Options, including Quick Release Categories in Ollie and WebSAFE. |
*Only when FMS is enabled for the Customer and Period Usage is enabled in Setup|Inventory.
**Requires Ollie or WebSAFE
You tag records in