Adding and Modifying Customer Records

• Before adding a new customer:

  • Decide on the customer number.
  • Decide on the customer group, national account (if applicable), account set, billing cycle, interest profile, terms code, optional fields, and tax group to assign to the customer. More...

    Customer groups provide default entries for new customer records, and can be used as selection and sorting criteria on various reports. You must assign a customer group to every customer record before you can add the record.

    If the customer is assigned to a national account, you must create the national account before creating the branch office customer records.

    National accounts let you invoice and accept payments from branch offices or the head office of multi-branch companies. National accounts specify some entries for associated customer records, provide some default entries for new customer records, and can be used as selection and sorting criteria on various reports.

    If you use multicurrency, you must assign an account set that uses the customer’s currency.

  • If you use multicurrency accounting, determine the rate type to use if the customer does not use the functional currency.

• Before editing a customer record, note that:

  • You cannot change the customer number. More...

    To assign a different number to a customer account, you must:

    1. Create a new customer record.
    2. Post transactions to reduce the balance in the old customer account to zero and transfer outstanding and historical invoice and payment information from the old account to the new account, customer group, and national account, if any.
    3. Delete the old customer record.
  • You can change the customer name at any time, but you must include a name in each customer record.
  • You can change most of the information in a customer record at any time, with these restrictions:
    • You cannot edit a customer record if the customer’s group or national account is inactive.
    • If you need to change the billing cycle or interest profile, you must change it for the national account, using the A/R National Accounts screen. The change affects all the customer records that are assigned to the national account.
  • You can change the customer group. When you change the customer group, Accounts Receivable preserves the existing entries in the customer record. It does not overwrite any other fields.

    Note: You cannot reassign a customer to a customer group that has Inactive status.

  • If you change the account set, statistics for the affected customer groups and national accounts will no longer balance. You can edit the statistics to correct the information, but it can be a difficult task.

    Important! We recommend that you do not change the customer group or account set assigned to a customer record to which you have posted transactions. If you make the change, you may need to post adjustments to your general ledger for transactions such as invoices that were posted to the original account set and payments to the invoices that were posted to the new account set.

  • If you have unpaid posted transactions for the customer, you can change the tax group assigned to a customer only to another tax group that uses the same currency.
  • You can remove the national account number from a customer record if the customer’s account balance is zero.

  • You can also assign the customer to a different national account, with these restrictions:

    • The customer’s account balance must be zero.
    • You cannot assign a customer to a national account that has Inactive status.
    • If you use multicurrency accounting, you can change a customer’s national account only to another national account that uses the same currency as the customer if you have posted transactions for the customer.

    When you change the national account for a customer, Accounts Receivable overwrites the Account Type, Billing Cycle, and Interest Profile fields, which must be identical to those of the national account.

  • If you plan to edit customer statistics, you must select the Allow Edit Of (customer) Statistics option on the A/R Options screen.

Note: You cannot delete a customer record, or set it inactive, if it has unposted transactions