Customer Reference

To access customers from the main menu select Section|Customers...

For information on keyboard navigation see: Keyboard Short-Cuts.

This part of the system is used to determine the financial status of a customer and to enter or alter customer details.

For a guide to customer menu options consult the topic: Customer Menu

The fields in customer accounts have the following meanings:

Code

The account code. It is best to use a consistent coding scheme that is easy to remember. We suggest the code consist of the first two or three letters of the first name of the company and the next two or three letters of the second name. Some prefer to use the first three letters and a three digit number. (Whatever the system you use, your codes should be easy to work out and recall--preferably without having to refer to a printed list.)

An account code should serve the purpose of enabling a user to locate an account quickly with a minimum of keystrokes. You can, however, also locate accounts by account name and other means.

Category

This is another code that you may optionally use in order to sub-divide your accounts into different groupings for reporting purposes.

If the card file CUSCAT exists in your directory you will also be able to select a category from a list of choices.

Name

The name of the account.

Account On Hold

Ticking this field puts this account "on hold." CAPITAL will then refuse to process invoices for this account. It will still accept payments.

Address

The address of the account.

Suburb

The suburb of the account.

State

The Australian state of the account.

For foreign country addresses place the state or province in the address line.

Postcode

The Australian postcode of the account.

If you are entering an overseas account leave this blank and place the postcode, zip code or other reference as part of the Country field.

Contact

The contact name for this account.

Country

The country of origin of this account.

Delivery

The delivery name of the account. The fields following this should contain the most common delivery address. You can add further delivery addresses through the Delivery Address menu option.

Phone

The phone number of the account.

Fax

The fax number of the account.

Mobile

The mobile telephone/contact number.

Salesperson

The salesperson in your organization that handles this account (if applicable).

Credit

The credit limit of the account.

Terms

The trading terms in days that you have extended to this account. The default is 30 days. If this number is entered, 1 Month will appear next to this field. Invoices fall due on the first day of the next month if calendar month ageing applies to this account.

If this account has been set to age by terms or transaction due date, any transactions assigned to this account will fall due on the date of the transaction plus the number of days held in the Terms field. When ageing by due date, the Terms setting is a default suggestion only. Users may override the terms by changing the Due date in order to either extend or decrease the terms for each individual transaction.

Cash On Delivery (C.O.D.) Accounts

When zero days are specified, the account is treated as C.O.D. and the invoicing system prompts for payment when totaling each transaction. C.O.D. accounts are assumed to be aged by calendar month on CAPITAL's standard reports.

Be sure that if you use CASH type customers you won't be extending them credit occasionally. If you will be, use a STANDARD account with 0 (zero) trading terms. This will still prompt for payment but will let you continue if no payment has been made at the time of sale.

Head Office

Tick here only if this account is a head office for the purposes of central billing.

Central Billing

The head office account this account should be billed to for central billing purposes. For example, this account may be a branch of a retail chain which has a head office that issues payments. The head office account code would be entered here if applicable.

CAPITAL still maintains each account separately, but can produce combined statements for organizations that require them.

Discount

Enter a number between 1 and 9 to access one of the standard 9 discount rates. Or you may enter a price group code to utilise special pricing rules set-up in the Customer Special Pricing Table. Discounts can be set-up in a variety of different ways. See INSTALLATION Workshop for more information on this topic.

To use an example, if an account has a discount of 4, then all goods invoiced to the account will be charged at rate 4. Accounts issued with a discount of 0 or where the Discount field is left blank, receive the default sell price. If no account discount is specified, CAPITAL uses the default sell price anyway.

If you want to assign the account to a Price Group you can a specify a Price Group code here. Price Groups allow you to specify prices based on a wide variety of different conditions. For example, if you wanted to reduce the price in relation to the quantity sold, or discount a particular group of goods only. Price group codes may be up to 8 characters long and must consist of letters of the alphabet only.

For example, assigning the code TRADE to the Discount field would result in the account receiving special TRADE pricing. The actual prices received are determined by the entries under this code in the Special Price Table.

For more information on this topic see: Customer Special Pricing.

It is also possible to specify a discount specific to each account, i.e., 15% off list price for account ABC. In order to do this you would click the Setting 2 tab button in customer accounts and enter a formula in the Discount Formula field.

Discount Formula

Used to assign a special discount formula to a particular account. This discount overrides the standard discount, but does not override Customer Special Pricing rules or Customer Stock Item Pricing.

A typical formula might look like:

A + 10%

If you are using CAPITAL's multi-department system to transfer stock between different locations and do not wish to charge for the items moved, enter a 0 (zero) in the discount formula of the destination department/location. Setting the discount formula to 0 (zero) also has the desirable effect of disabling the "stock item cost too low" warning message.

For troubleshooting also see the topic: Discount Solver.

Display Discount

This option is only applicable when a Visual Builder form has been designed to utilize this feature. If this is the case, when ticked, a discount rate will appear in a discount column on your invoice. If unticked the column will be left blank. (Useful if you do not wish to show all customers that you give discounts.) The Visual Builder form codes that are affected are: DISCOUNT and DAMOUNT.

Issue Penalty

Determines whether a penalty should be issued to this account for late payment or a handling fee. If this option is ticked this account will be eligible for account penalties.

For information on issuing customer penalties consult the topic: Customer Penalties.

Customer Letters

If this option is unticked, this account may be skipped during customer letter printing. If this account is a sub-account this option should be left unticked.

For more information on printing customer letters consult the topic: Customer Mailing List Letters.

Require Order No

If selected you will be warned when a customer requires an order number and an order number has not been supplied. The warning occurs when selecting an account during invoicing (and optionally, sales order entry) and when entering new transactions or saving/totaling a transaction. The warning only occurs if the reference field relating to the transaction is completely blank.

Back Order

Tick this field if this account will accept back orders.

If this option is selected you can set the Back Order Control Centre to automatically clear any back orders that cannot be filled immediately from stock. For more information on this topic consult: Back Order Options.

Settlement Terms

The number of days from the due date that invoices must be paid no later than, to be entitled to an early payment discount.

Early Settlement

The early payment discount an account will be issued if payment is made within the agreed upon settlement terms.

Currency

Enter the foreign currency code applicable to this account if it is an overseas account.

GL Set

For more information on General Ledger sets, see the General Ledger instruction manual or on-line help.

Account Type

Select the account type here. For more information about the various account types see: Customer Concepts.

Form

An account may be assigned a unique invoice lay-out by specifying its name in this field. For example, the account CASH might automatically print a small cash receipt to a local printer, while an account customer may receive a more detailed document.

Unless a default form has been specified by account or transaction type, CAPITAL will remember the last form that was selected and continue to use it when printing further invoices. You therefore need to set default forms that will override your customer form settings if you assign forms to specific accounts.

Also see the topic: Form Hints.

Department

An account may be linked to a specific department by specifying the department here.

You may not specify the department if the account type is already set to "internal".

If Departmental Restrictions apply, then once a customer account is assigned to a department, users who do not have permission to work in this department, will be unable to assign new transactions to this customer. If you do not wish to enforce such a restriction, leave the Department field blank.

This option is not available for editing if multi-department mode is not activated.

Access Level

See Security for more information on access levels.

Prompt Freight

You can disable prompting for freight for this account by ticking this field when applicable. (This would be useful if the account always picks up or uses its own freight company.)

If freight prompting is turned off in INSTALLATION Workshop, the value of this setting is ignored.

Freight Amount

The default freight amount that this account is charged. It can be changed at the time of invoicing. If prompting for freight is turned off in INSTALLATION Workshop, the amount contained in this field is ignored.

Invoice back orders will not be charged this freight amount unless "Freight fee on partial releases" found under Install|Back Orders in INSTALLATION Workshop program is ticked.

This value is not used by the sales orders freight prompting system.

List Price

This is the customer list price (ex tax if applicable). It is displayed on transactions if the LISTPRICE code is used on a Visual Builder form.

Valid entries include A-H (one of the Stock Control price fields) or 1-9 (one of the standard discount table rates). Also keep in mind that Customer Stock Item Pricing may override either the global or customer list price setting.

List Price Inc

If you maintain separate exclusive of tax and inclusive of tax pricing then specify the list price including tax here. Otherwise it is recommended that you set it to the same setting as List price.

Tax No

If the company is tax exempt or GST free, enter a number or code here. If you don't enter a tax number or code, CAPITAL assumes this account pays tax. There are two exceptions to this rule. If you type "NO" or "NIL" CAPITAL will still apply any applicable tax.

Retention

If a Retention rate is specified, CAPITAL will calculate the portion of Retention that should be withheld from payment to your customer. You must set-up the Retention system via INSTALLATION Workshop before you can use this facility.

Retention is not supported for foreign currency accounts. If the account is foreign currency, you will not be permitted to enter a Retention rate.

Age By Month

Tick this option if you want to age this account by standard calendar month. This is the default setting. If this option is selected you may change the account Terms to a number other than 30 days (1 month) but ageing will still be calculated monthly.

Age By Terms

Tick this option if you want to age the transactions assigned to this account by the actual date of each transaction, rather than by the period the transaction was created in. Ageing by terms is particularly useful if you are managing short terms, such as 7 or 14 day accounts.

It is generally fruitless to select ageing by terms if you will not be enforcing these payment terms with your accounts. For example, if you only intend to print statements and account overdue reports once per month, you are better off running calendar month ageing. In this way you are less likely to inadvertently give your customers more credit than they are entitled to.

Age By Due Dates

Tick this option if you want to age the transactions assigned to this by due dates. Ageing by due date is similar to ageing by terms, but you have the option of controlling the terms by individual transaction. Each transaction in CAPITAL that affects supplier or customer accounts has a due date calculated automatically, based on the date of the transaction plus the account's terms. When ageing by due date you may either extend or reduce the terms by individual transaction, by changing the due date.

Changing the terms of an account that is being aged by due dates does not update any unpaid transactions with the new terms! These must be changed manually. For example, if you are reducing the terms of an account but do not edit the unpaid transactions and adjust the individual Due dates for each, it will appear as if you have issued extended credit to these transactions.

Print Statements

Unticking this option to skip over statement printing for this account. You should not print a statement for a sub-account.

You may still print a statement by specifically locating this account and selecting to print a single statement for it.

For information on statement printing and central billing see the topic: Central Billing Statements.

On-Screen Ageing

Customer accounts may be aged by credit terms or standard (calendar month) periods on-screen when the Statistics button is pressed. If you are ageing the account by terms or due dates, then the ageing periods may be displayed as multiples of the account terms. I.e., 7 day accounts may be displayed as 0, 7, 14 and 21+ days on screen. By default, CAPITAL ages each account by calendar month on-screen because this is quick and efficient.

Many present day computers do not have the processing power to make ageing by terms practical, since CAPITAL must re-age every account accessed, each new day. This can drastically reduce the performance of your system. Nonetheless, even if on-screen ageing by terms is not selected, the correct ageing will appear on printed reports. An alternative is to "age" your accounts over-night, so that there is no performance loss during the day.

Customer Bank Details

Bank Account

Enter the customers bank code. Entering this information here will shorten the time it takes for processing customer cheques. If your customer pays you with cheques from more than one bank, it is recommended that you leave this field blank.

Branch Details

Enter the branch details of this account. This is the branch of the bank your customer's cheques come from.

Drawer's Name

Enter the account's drawer's name if this differs from the name of the customer account. If the name of your customer and the name on the cheques you bank for this customer are the same, you can leave this field blank.

Deposit In

The company bank account that all payment transactions relating to this account will be deposited in. You may override the default bank code during payment entry if you wish.

Card Billing

Tick if you intend to bill transactions raised under this account directly to a credit card. For this to work, the account's Terms must be set to 0 days (C.O.D). Otherwise, the account will be extended credit and automatic billing of their credit card will not occur.

Automatic card billing occurs when:

Invoices are created.
Service Manager invoices are created.
Hire Manager invoices are created.
When Back Orders are released.

Transactions entered in summary form through Customer Entries are not automatically billed. Payment must be entered manually.

CAPITAL must be set to process credit cards, for credit card billing to be activated. The setting Prompt Credit Card Details must be ticked under Install|Cash Management|Payment Methods in INSTALLATION Workshop.

Card Number

Enter the customer's credit card number for direct credit card billing if this option has been selected.

Holder Name

Enter the customer's card holder name for direct credit card billing if this option has been selected.

Expiry Date

Enter the expiry date of the credit card for direct billing if this option has been selected.

Card Type

Enter the card type, as a number, that you will use for direct billing. To view a list of payment methods, click on the scroll bar to access a drop down list. You can only choose a payment method from the list that is recognised by CAPITAL as being a credit card type. Credit cards can be defined in INSTALLATION Workshop under Install|Cash Management|Payment Methods.

E-mail

The customer e-mail address.

Web Site

The customer web site address.

Comments

Optionally enter any miscellaneous comments that you wish to make about this account.

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