About Optional Fields in Accounts Receivable

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You can customize your Accounts Receivable system by using optional fields to store additional information about customers and transaction details.

Optional fields also provide an additional means of analyzing receivables data. You can include optional field information when you print reports, such as a list of customers, national accounts, customer groups, ship-to locations, and recurring charges.

In addition, you can use optional fields as selection criteria when you print statements, letters, labels, aging reports, and reports of customer transactions. Accounts Receivable prints information only for customers that use those optional fields and have values that fall within the specified ranges.

If you use exactly the same optional fields in Accounts Receivable and General Ledger, General Ledger retains the optional field information sent with transactions that you generate in Accounts Receivable.

You can use an unlimited number of optional fields in Accounts Receivable. However, you must first define optional fields for your Sage 300 system using the Optional Fields screen in Common Services.

Once you have set up optional fields for your Sage 300 system, you use the A/R Optional Fields screen to assign the optional fields to use with the following Accounts Receivable records and transactions:

Customers, national accounts, and customer groups.
Ship-to locations.
Invoices (including interest, retainage, and recurring charge invoices).
Invoice details.
Adjustments (including write-off adjustments).
Receipts.
Revaluation.

You can assign customer optional fields to customer records in Accounts Receivable. For more information, see:

You can assign optional fields set up for use in transaction entry screens to particular transactions. For more information, see:

Optional Fields on Customers Screens

Optional customer fields that are marked for automatic insertion appear on the Optional Fields tabs on new customer, national account, and customer group records.

Default values for optional fields appear in records as follows:

Customer Groups. The default value entered in the Optional Fields screen appears.
National Accounts. If no default value is specified for a particular optional field in the customer group record, Accounts Receivable displays the default value assigned to the optional field on the A/R Optional Fields screen.
Customers. If a customer belongs to a national account, Accounts Receivable displays the optional fields and their default values (if any) from the national account record.
If both the national account record and the customer group record specify a default value for an optional field, the value from the national account record is used.
If the customer does not belong to a national account, the program displays the optional fields specified for the customer group to which the customer belongs.

You can accept or change the default values that appear for optional fields in customer group, national account, customer, and ship-to location records.

Note:

If the Value field is blank, the optional field may have a blank default value or it may have no value. Look at the Value Set field:

If it displays Yes, the seemingly blank optional field has an automatically inserted—but "blank"—default value.
If it displays No, the optional field has no default value.

Similarly, ship-to location optional fields that are marked for automatic insertion appear on the Optional Fields tab of new ship-to location records.

The A/R Recurring Charges setup screen uses the same optional fields set up for the Invoice Entry screen. (The screens you use to create transactions automatically use the optional fields set up for the type of transactions they generate.)

Note: The data you enter in optional fields in a customer record appears for the customer on the A/R Invoice Entry screen if you use exactly the same optional fields for customers as for invoices.

Validating Optional Field Entries

Optional fields may use validation, which limits the values that can be entered in the fields.

If the optional field is validated, you must specify a value that is defined for the optional field on the Optional Fields screen in Common Services.
Note: If the optional field allows blanks, you can leave the value field blank.
If the optional field is not validated, you can enter any value that is consistent with the type of field (such as yes/no, text, number, date, or amount), providing the value you enter does not exceed the length permitted for the field. You can also leave the field blank.

When you specify a value that is defined on the Optional Fields screen in Common Services, the description for the value is also displayed.