About Optional Fields in Accounts Receivable

Optional fields are available if you have purchased and activated Sage 300 Transaction Analysis and Optional Field Creator, a separately licensed package.

Accounts Receivable optional fields let you customize your Accounts Receivable system by letting you store an unlimited amount of additional information with customer records and transaction details.

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

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

If you use exactly the same optional fields in Accounts Receivable and General Ledger, General Ledger can retain the optional field information sent with transactions that you generate in Accounts Receivable. (Optional field settings let you filter the optional field information that is passed to General Ledger.)

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. For more information about setting up optional fields in Common Services, see the System Manager help.

Once you have set up optional fields for your Sage 300 system, you use the A/R Options screen in the A/R Setup folder to define optional fields for 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:

• A/R Customers Screen
• A/R National Accounts Screen
• A/R Customer Groups Screen
• A/R Ship-To Locations Screen
• A/R Recurring Charges Screen

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

• About Entering Optional Fields on Adjustment Transactions
• About Entering Optional Fields on Invoices
• About Entering Optional Fields on Receipts

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, for:

• Customer Groups. The value entered in the Optional Fields record appears.
• National Accounts. If no default value is specified for a particular optional field in the customer group record, the program displays the default value assigned to the optional field on the A/R Optional Fields screen.
• Customers. Optional fields and values that you assign to a national account appear as defaults on the Optional Fields tab for any new customer records you add to the national account.

  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: The Value Set field alerts you whether a seemingly blank optional field has an automatically inserted—but "blank"—default value. If it has a blank value, the Value Set field displays Yes. (You cannot tell whether an optional field has a blank default value, or no value, just by looking at the Value field.)

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 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.)

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 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.

Note: When you specify a value that is defined in Common Services, the description for the value is also displayed.

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.