If you have customers that are subsidiaries or branch offices of a large company, you can use national accounts to process a single payment from the head office and apply it to the subsidiary accounts. In one step, you can also place a account and all its subsidiaries on hold.
If you want to record invoice payments for all branches through the national account, you add a customer record for the national account using the national account number as the customer number.
You can look up and print a report of total statistics from the transactions posted to all the customers in each national account, and you can also limit the contents of other Accounts Receivable reports to one or more of your national accounts.
When to Use National Accounts
You should use national accounts if you process transactions for a head office and its branches and you want to:
- Accept a single payment from a company and apply it to outstanding invoices for all its branches.
- Send invoices and statements to the head office, and send orders to the individual branches.
- Make sure that when you put a head office on hold, Accounts Receivable warns you about the hold when you enter invoices for its subsidiaries.
- Prevent posting further transactions to customers in the national account by assigning Inactive status to the national account.
- Apply different taxes to transactions for the head office and its branches.
- Assign the salespeople who are responsible for each national account, and set the default salespersons and percentages for the customers you add to the national account.
- Keep a set of sales and receipt statistics for the national account as a whole, and keep statistics separately for the head office and each branch.
- Set default entries to assign to new customer records you add to the national account.
- Record a separate comment for each office.
You enter invoices separately for all the branches (customers) in a national account, but you can receive a single receipt (payment) from the head office and apply it to invoices for any of the customers in the national account.
To be able to apply receipts to the customers of a national account, you:
- Set up a customer record for the national account.
- Assign the national account to the customer records for the head office and all its subsidiaries or branches.
You can then display and select any of the transactions posted for the account's customers when you apply receipts from the national account.
Creating National Accounts
You use the A/R National Accounts screen to define the national accounts you want to use. For each account, you specify a unique code of up to 12 characters.
You select a customer group for each national account, and choose the account type, account set, terms code, rate type (in multicurrency ledgers), billing cycle, and interest profile that you use for most of the national account's customers.
You can also enter the address to which you send statements and letters for the national account, as well as the phone and fax numbers, and the name of a contact at the head office.
This information appears as the default information in new customer records you add to the account, so that the billing address for the customers in the national account is automatically that of the national account, unless you change it.
Specifying Billing and Shipping Addresses for National Accounts
If you use Accounts Receivable to print your invoices, the program automatically prints the address from the customer record on the invoice.
If you need separate billing and shipping addresses for the head office of the national account and its branches, you enter the billing address in the customer record for each branch, then create a ship-to location record for each of the other addresses you want to record for a branch.
When you enter invoices for the branches, you select the address (ship-to location) to which you will ship the order. Accounts Receivable can then print the national account's billing address on the invoices and the selected shipping addresses on any shipping labels you print, provided that the formats you use to print invoices and labels include the necessary fields.
Assigning Credit Limits to National Accounts
You can assign a credit limit to each national account, to help you control the size of the balance the company owes you at any time.
If a company already owes you more than its credit limit, Accounts Receivable warns you when you begin entering a transaction for the company's head office or any of its branches. Accounts Receivable also warns you when you try to save a new invoice or debit memo that will put the balance owing for the company over its credit limit. In both cases, you can choose whether to add the transaction or cancel it.
Accounts Receivable also indicates the customers and national accounts that are over their credit limits on batch listings.
If you want to modify the credit limit for a national account, you must select the Allow Edit Of Credit Check option in the customer group assigned to the account. If you do not select this option, you must accept the customer group's credit limit for the national accounts you assign to the group and for the customer records you create for the national account.
Keeping Statistics for National Accounts
Accounts Receivable keeps the same types of statistics for national accounts as for customer groups, and displays them on the Statistics tab of the National Accounts screen. You can edit and display the statistics as described in the previous section for customer group statistics.
Accounts Receivable keeps track of additional statistics for each national account, including the amount and date of the highest balance and largest invoice in the current and previous years, and the last invoice, receipt, credit note, debit note, adjustment, write-off, interest invoice, and returned check posted to the national account.
The program also calculates the total invoices paid, total days to pay, and average days to pay for the account.
Using Optional Fields in National Accounts
If you use optional fields, any optional fields that you set up for automatic insertion in customer group, national account, and customer records automatically appear, along with their default values, on the Optional Fields tab of new national account records.
You can accept the optional fields that appear or you can delete them, and you can accept or change any default values that appear. You can also assign additional optional fields that you have set up for customers, national accounts, and customer groups.
Optional field values from the national account appear as defaults on the Optional Fields tab for any new customer records you add to a national account if the optional fields in the customer record match those used by the national account.
Placing National Accounts On Hold
If you do not want to post new invoices to a national account, perhaps because there is a dispute about the account, you can place the national account on hold. Accounts Receivable then warns you about the hold when you enter invoices for customers assigned to the national account. You then decide whether to cancel the invoices or enter them.
The option has no effect on credit notes, debit notes, receipts, and prepayments.
Assigning Inactive Status to National Accounts
When you plan to delete a national account, you can make sure that no further transactions are posted for its customers by selecting Inactive as the status for the national account.
Note: You can delete a national account only if no customers are assigned to it and the national account balance is zero.
Inactive status allows you to keep a national account in your Accounts Receivable system until you are ready to delete it.
Changing Information for National Accounts
You can change most of the information in a national account record at any time, except:
- You cannot change to a customer group that has an Inactive status.
- You cannot select Inactive status for a national account if any of its customer accounts has a non-zero balance.
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In multicurrency ledgers, you can change the account set for a national account only to a set that uses the same currency.
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You cannot directly change a national account code. However, you can accomplish the same effect if you:
- Add a national account with the code you want to use.
- Transfer all the customers in the national account to the new national account.
- Enter the national account statistics in the record for the new national account.
- Delete the national account with the unwanted code.
- Create a new national account customer record with a number that is identical to the new national account number.
- Transfer data from the old customer record to the new national account customer record.
Most changes have an effect only on new customer records you create and assign to the national account, later, with these exceptions:
- If you change the billing cycle or interest profile for a national account, the same change is automatically made to all the customer records assigned to the national account.
- If you put a national account on hold, you see a warning message when you add invoices for customers assigned to the national account.
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If you assign Inactive status to a national account, you cannot:
- Add new customers to the national account.
- Make changes to the customer records assigned to the national account except to change their national account number.
- Add invoices and other transactions for the customers in the national account.
- Update associated customer records, as needed, with national account changes that are not also made automatically in the customer records. More...