Creating a Customer

You must enter a customer record for each of your customers. This record maintains detailed information for the customer and is used throughout the system. The Customers form accesses all the relevant information for storing basic customer data, tracking what customers buy from your company and what they owe you.

You can set up a customer record so that a customer can have one Bill To address and multiple Ship To locations. In the customer record, it is also possible to specify whether the balance method used for a customer is Balance Forward or Open Item.

On the form, if you use a Terms code with multiple due dates assigned to it, you cannot use these options:

Letter of Credit
Consolidated Invoicing
Payment Type: Draft.

When you create a new customer, the Ship To tab does not display any information until you save the form and refresh it or close and reopen it. To create additional shipping addresses, click the Ship Tos button in the Ship To tab.

The monetary amounts shown on the Payment History tab are displayed in the domestic currency.

Use the Corporate Customer tab to define a corporate customer who has related subordinate customers. After you define a corporate customer, the Corporate check box is enabled on other forms.

For the EU VAT tab and all fields on this tab to be enabled, you must have the Activate EU Reporting check box selected on the General Parameters form.

Use the Customer Interactions tab to select an interaction and then review information about that interaction with the customer. The information comes from the Customer Interactions form and is display only.

Note:

In a multi-site environment, the globe symbol appears to the right of the Credit Limit, Posted Balance, and On Order Balance fields. This symbol signifies that these fields are global. The amounts displayed in these fields are the accumulated total amounts.
If you have a master site for an intranet, you can use the Multi-Site Customers form to add and update customer information for sites on that intranet.
To delete a customer from a site in a multi-site environment, you must use the Customers form. This deletes the customer's record in the site's "customer" table. However, there is also an associated "custaddr" table record, containing information such as the customer's name and address. Because the custaddr table is shared between sites, the custaddr record for this customer is deleted only when the customer number is no longer in use at any site.
If a customer exists in one site in a multi-site environment, the same customer number cannot be used with a different customer name in other sites.
The availability of a customer record is specific to a site. If the same customer record is used in more than one site, each site will maintain the availability of that record.

Note:

If the customer is on credit hold, a problem indicator is displayed at the top of the form. If the customer is not on credit hold, a check mark is displayed.
When a customer is placed on credit hold, no shipments can be made to that customer. Placing a customer on credit hold does not place individual orders on credit hold, but if the customer is on credit hold, the system will not allow shipments to that customer. To place individual orders on credit hold, use the Customer Orders form.

To enter a new customer record:

Open the Customers form, or the Multi-Site Customers form if you are working in a master site.
Turn off Filter-in-Place mode.
Select Actions > New.
In the Customer field, do one of these:
- To define your own customer identifier, enter the alphanumeric character string to use.
- To allow the system to generate the customer identifier, using the Customer Prefix defined on the Accounts Receivable Parameters form, leave the field blank.
Note: The check mark that is displayed in the top-right corner of the form indicates that this customer is not on credit hold. If you put this customer on credit hold, a problem indicator is displayed on the form.
Enter the customer's billing address information in the address fields.
To further define the customer's billing information, such as choosing the customer's language, currency code, and bank information, enter the appropriate data in the form's fields.

For more information, see the field descriptions.
To save the initial record, select Actions > Save.
Select the Ship To tab. You can enter up to 9999 different addresses for this customer to define secondary addresses for shipping purposes.
Click the Ship Tos button located at the bottom of the tab to open the Customer Ship Tos (or Multi-Site Customer Ship-Tos) form.
Select Actions > New.
In the Ship To field, enter a number or leave the field blank to accept the next available sequential number. This number is used on the Customer Order Lines form when you are specifying a drop-ship-to location.
On the Address tab, enter the shipping address information for this ship-to location.
On the Codes tab, specify the appropriate information in the fields. For more information, see the field descriptions.
Select Actions > Save to save the ship-to location.
Add additional ship-to locations as necessary. When you are finished, return to the Customers form.
Select the Credit tab. On this tab you can define the amount of credit extended to the customer. When you add a new customer order, if that order total exceeds this credit limit, the system displays a warning message (which you can override). You can also put the customer on credit hold, which blocks any shipping transactions for this customer. For more information, see the field descriptions.
Select the Contacts tab. Specify the names and contact information for order and billing communications with this customer. For more information, see the field descriptions.
Select the Codes tab. Define default codes for this customer. For more information, see the field descriptions.
Select the Payment History tab. Enter the initial amounts for the sales and payment history for this customer. You only need to do this when you initially set up the customer. The system maintains most of these values through normal day-to-day transactions.

For example, when invoices, debits or credits are posted, the currency amount of the transaction posts to the Sales PTD field. Invoices and debits increase the Sales PTD, and credits decrease it. You update the Average Balance Outstanding, the Largest Balance Outstanding, and the Last Amount Outstanding values by running the A/R Balance History Utility.

For more information, see the field descriptions.
Select the Corporate Customer tab. This tab allows you to define a two-tier relationship between separate customer records. In the Corporate Cust field, if you select this current customer's customer number, you are specifying this customer as the "corporate customer." If you select another customer number in this field, you are specifying this current customer as the "subordinate customer" (that is, subordinate to the customer you specify in the Corporate Cust field).

Only the customer that you specify as the "corporate customer" appears on the Bill To tab. This allows you to apply a single payment across multiple subordinate customer invoices. By selecting the Corp. Credit field, you can use the corporate customer's credit values for credit limit processing, or clear this field to use the subordinate customer's credit values.

For more information, see the field descriptions.
If European Union codes must be set up for this customer, select the EU VAT tab and specify the codes. For more information, see the field descriptions.
To use revision/pay days for invoicing, select the Revision/Pay tab. The revision day determines when the invoice is sent to the customers. The pay day determines when a check can be collected once the invoice due date is calculated. For more information, see the field descriptions.
To define sales team/contact information for the customer, select the CRM tab. For more information, see the field descriptions.
If multiple currencies must be set up for the customer, use the Currency Codes tab or the Customer Currency Codes form.
When you are finished defining this customer record, to save your changes, select Actions > Save.