Customers

A customer record holds everything a sale to them needs: the currency they pay in, the term their invoices fall due on, the accounts their documents post to, the price list that prices their lines and the rep who looks after them. Set it once, and every quotation, order, invoice and return you raise for them starts right.

Create a customer

1. Go to Sales ‣ Master data ‣ Customers and click New customer.
2. On the General tab, enter the Name. Leave Code empty to have the next number given to the customer when you save.
3. Pick the Subsidiary that sells to them, or leave it empty to share the customer with every subsidiary.
4. Pick the Type: Business or Individual.
5. Open the Financial tab and check the Currency, Payment term and Posting profile, which start from the Sales settings.
6. Open the Sales tab and pick the Price list and the Sales rep.
7. Click Save.

The customer opens with their Balance, Available credit, Credit limit and Payment term at the top. The balance moves as their invoices, credit notes and payments post in Receivables.

Field	What it sets
Arabic name	The customer’s name in Arabic.
Email, Phone, Mobile, Website	How you reach them.
Tax ID	Their tax registration number.
Company reg. no.	Their commercial registration number.
Currency	The currency their documents are raised in.
Credit limit	The most they may owe you at one time. 0 means no limit. See Credit limits.
Payment term	When their invoices fall due.
Posting profile	The receivable, revenue and returns accounts their documents post to. See Posting profiles.
Category	The group they belong to.
Price list	Where their lines are priced from.
Sales rep	The field rep their documents are credited to. Each new order starts with this rep.

Note

Currency, Payment term and Posting profile are required. If the Sales settings carry no default for one of them, pick it on the customer, or the save is refused.

Add addresses

Give a customer the address you invoice and the address you deliver to.

1. Open the customer, click Edit and open the Addresses tab.
2. Under Billing address, enter the street, City, Postal code and the rest of the address.
3. Under Shipping address, enter the delivery address. Click Pick on map to search a place or drop a pin, so the address carries its location.
4. Click Save.

A shipping address with a location puts the customer on the map used to plan field reps’ journeys.

Group customers into categories

Categories let you sort and filter customers, for example by trade or by size.

1. Go to Sales ‣ Master data ‣ Categories and click New customer category.
2. Enter the Code and Name, and a Description if it helps.
3. Pick a Subsidiary, or leave it empty so every subsidiary can use the category.
4. Click Save.

Pick the category on a customer’s Sales tab. An inactive category is hidden from new customers; a category still carried by customers, or set as the default in the Sales settings, cannot be archived.

Example

A food distributor sells to restaurants, hotels and corner shops. It makes one category for each, so the sales manager can filter the customer list by trade before planning a promotion.

Import customers

To load many customers at once, import them from a spreadsheet.

1. Go to Sales ‣ Master data ‣ Customers and click Import.
2. Under Download template, pick CSV (.csv) or Excel (.xlsx), and fill in one customer per row. Code, Name and PostingProfile are required.
3. Drop the file on the dialog, or click to browse for it.
4. Under Map columns, match each expected field to a column of your file, and click Continue.
5. Check the Preview, then click the button that imports the rows, for example Import 40 rows.

The rows you import are saved together or not at all: if any of them is refused, nothing is saved, and the Result step lists each bad row with its error. Currency, payment term, category and price list are given by their codes; an empty one takes the default from the Sales settings.

Archive a customer

Archive a customer you no longer sell to, so they leave the lists and pickers.

1. Open the customer and click Archive.
2. Confirm with Archive.

A customer can be archived only once they have no open sales order and owe you nothing. Their code stays reserved. To sell to them again, turn on Show archived on the customer list, open the customer and click Restore.

Messages you may meet

Message	What to do
No currency was supplied and the subsidiary’s sales settings carry no default.	Pick the Currency on the Financial tab, or set a default in the Sales settings.
No payment term was supplied and the subsidiary’s sales settings carry no default.	Pick the Payment term, or set a default.
No posting profile was supplied and the subsidiary’s sales settings carry no default.	Pick the Posting profile, or set a default.
A customer with that code already exists.	Enter another Code, or leave it empty to have one given.
The customer still has open sales orders; close or cancel them, or deactivate the customer.	Close or cancel the customer’s open orders, then archive.
The customer still has an outstanding balance; settle it before archiving the customer.	Collect or credit what they owe first.
The customer is archived. Restore it before editing.	Click Restore, then edit.