Entering the first Customers, Suppliers and Contact Persons
Information about your Customers, Suppliers and Contact Persons and all other companies and individuals with whom you have some contact is stored in a single register, the
Contact register. This register is available in many modules including Sales and Purchase Orders, the Sales and Purchase Ledgers, and Contracts, Quotations, CRM and Service Orders if installed. Storing Customers, Suppliers, Contact Persons and other companies and individuals together in one register means that you can make full use of the
Calendar,
Task Manager,
Mails and
Letters with companies and individuals of all kinds. It also means that you will only have to maintain a single record for a company who is both a Customer and a Supplier. You should store all other companies (e.g. leasing companies, factoring companies, sales leads, etc) in the Contact register as well, together with the contact persons that work for those companies.
Throughout these web pages, the terms "Customer" and "Supplier" are used to refer to records in the Contact register. Those records do not necessarily represent firms that have purchased goods or services from your business, or sold goods or services to you, and in fact can represent any company that is a potential customer or supplier.
The term "Customer" is usually used when describing the use of a record in the Customer register in a sales context, while "Supplier" is used in a purchase context. "Supplier" implies that the Supplier box in the header of the Contact record has been checked.
As soon as contact is established between your business and a potential client or supplier, you should record their details in the Contact register. You should register their relationship with you (e.g. "Prospect" or "Lead") using the Contact Classification field on the 'Contact' card of the Contact record. Mark the record as a Customer or a Supplier or both using the check boxes in the header, depending on their potential or actual relationship to your company. These check boxes will allow you to use the record in sales or purchase transactions as appropriate.
The term "Contact Person" is used when referring to an individual person: this may be a private individual or someone who works for a Customer or Supplier. In the latter case, you will have separate records in the Contact register for the Customer or Supplier and for the individual Contact Person. The Contact Person and Customer or Supplier will be linked using the Contact Relations register (described here).
The term "Contact" is used when referring to any record on the Contact register. A Contact can therefore be a Customer, a Supplier or a Contact Person.
On the sales side, you can group Customers of a similar type together using Customer Categories. Every Customer belonging to a Category will be given the same default Price List, Discount Matrix and Debtor Account, saving you the work of having to specify these in the Contact records for the individual Customers. Defining and assigning Customer Categories also makes modification easier: if you need to change the Discount Matrix, for example, you only need to make one change (to the Customer Category), rather than many (to each of the Customer records). If you specify information both for a Customer Category and in the Contact record of an individual Customer belonging to that Category, the information in the Contact record will take precedence. For example, if you specify a Price List in a Customer Category and in a Customer belonging to that Category, the one in the Customer will be used. Before entering Customers, therefore, it is recommended that you enter some Customer Categories, using the setting in the Sales Ledger.
Similarly, on the purchase side you can group Suppliers of a similar type together using Supplier Categories. Every Supplier belonging to the same Category will be given the same default On Account and Creditor Accounts, saving you the work of having to specify these for each one individually. A company that is both a Customer and Supplier can belong both to a Customer Category and to a Supplier Category. Before entering Suppliers, therefore, it is recommended that you enter some Supplier Categories, using the setting in the Purchase Ledger.
Before recording Customers and Suppliers in the Contact register, you should first make sure you have entered all relevant Payment Terms (used to calculate Due Dates and settlement discounts in Invoices) in the Payment Terms setting.
To enter your first record in the Contact register, follow these steps:
- Select one of the modules mentioned in the first paragraph using the [Switch Module] button in the Navigation Centre or the Ctrl-0 (zero) (Windows and Linux) or ⌘-0 (Mac OS X) keyboard shortcut . The same Contact register is available in all these modules. If these modules are not available, this will probably be because you have not granted yourself access to them in the Configuration setting. Please refer to the Modules, Users and Companies page.
- Open the Contact register by clicking the [Registers] button in the Navigation Centre and double-clicking 'Contacts' in the resulting list. The 'Contacts: Browse' window will open, listing the existing Contacts. In a new database, the only existing Contacts will be connected to Person records, created by the 'Create User' process described in step 5 on the User Accounts (Named Users and Concurrent Users with Mailboxes) page.
- Select 'New' from the Create menu in the Button Bar at the top of the browse window.
If you don't need to open the 'Contacts: Browse' window, a shortcut that omits step 2 is to open the + drop-down menu from the Navigation Centre (in the top right-hand corner if you are using Windows or Linux, towards the top left if you are using Mac OS X) and select 'Contacts'.
- If you are in Estonia, Latvia or the UK and you are using the default settings, a 'New Contact' window will open:
In Estonia or Latvia, if you are entering a Customer or Supplier, enter their Company Registration Number. If you are in the UK, enter the postcode (with or without space). Then, click the [Address Lookup] button. In the UK, a list of premises will then be opened, where you can select the correct building number, building name or company name. The 'Contact: New' window will then open, containing the company name and full address, obtained from a central database. Address Lookup is a chargeable Cloud Service. To use it, you must have registered your database in Estonia, Latvia or the UK using the Automatic Internet Enabler method, as described on the Enabler Key page. If you do not want the 'New Contact' window to open (i.e. you want to go straight to an empty 'Contact: New' window), use the Don't use Address Lookup when creating new Contacts option in the Contact Settings setting in the Sales Ledger or CRM module.
- The 'Contact: New' window shown below opens. If you chose to use the Address Lookup feature, the name and address of the Customer or Supplier will be filled in for you. If you did not use the Address Lookup feature, or you are not in Estonia, Latvia or the UK, the window will be empty.
Use this window to enter information about a Customer, Supplier or Contact Person. Notes about the more important fields can be found beneath the illustration: for full details about every field, please refer to the Contacts page.
- Customer, Supplier
- Mark the Contact as a Customer or Supplier or both as appropriate, using the check boxes at the top of the window.
- Marking the Contact as a Customer or Supplier does not necessarily mean it has purchased goods or services from your business, or sold goods or services to you: the company can also be a potential customer or supplier to your business.
- Marking the Contact as a Customer makes it available to the sales registers (e.g. Quotations, Sales Orders, Sales Invoices, Deliveries). Similarly, marking it as a Supplier makes it available to the purchase registers (e.g. Purchase Orders, Purchase Invoices, Goods Receipts). You can use both Customers and Suppliers in Activities (i.e. in the Calendar and Task Manager), Customer Letters and Mails.
- If in step 1 you opened the Contact register in a sales-orientated module (e.g. Sales Ledger or Sales Orders module), the new record will be marked as a Customer automatically. If you opened the Contact register in a purchase-orientated module (e.g. Purchase Ledger or Purchase Orders module), the new record will be marked as a Supplier automatically.
- If the Contact is a Customer or Supplier, the grid at the bottom of the 'Contact' card will list the Contact Persons working for them. Please refer to the Contact Persons page for full details.
- Invoice Address
- In a new database, the address lines will not be named, as shown in the illustration above. If you would like to name these fields, so that addresses are entered consistently, please refer to the Naming Address Fields page.
- Payment Terms
- You will see two Payment Terms fields if you click the tab marked 'Terms' in the middle of the screen. Choose using 'Paste Special' (Ctrl-Enter or ⌘-Enter) the Sales Payment Terms that you will offer to the Contact as a Customer and/or the Purchase Payment Terms that you will be given by the Contact as a Supplier. These Payment Terms will be used in all sales and purchase transactions (e.g. Quotations, Sales and Purchase Orders, Sales and Purchase Invoices).
- Reminders
- Check the Reminders box if the Contact is a Customer to whom you will want to send Open Invoice Customer Statements and Reminders for late payment.
- On Account
- Check this box if the Contact is a Customer who will send you payments on account (i.e. payments without Invoices e.g. deposits) or a Supplier to whom you will send payments on account.
- Credit Limit
- If the Contact is a Customer and you set a Credit Limit on the 'Terms' card, refer to the Credit Limit setting in the Sales Ledger to specify what should happen if they exceed it.
- Price List
- Use the Price List field on the 'Pricing' card if the Contact is a Customer and you want to offer them special (non-retail) prices. The Price List feature is described here.
- VAT Code
- On the 'Company' card, you should only specify Sales and/or Purchase VAT Codes for Customers and Suppliers to whom the standard VAT rates will not apply (e.g. charities). If you do need to specify a VAT Code, you can do so using the 'Paste Special' feature (Ctrl-Enter/⌘-Enter).
- VAT Zone
- While on the 'Company' card, you should also choose the correct VAT Zone for the Customer or Supplier. This will ensure VAT will be calculated correctly. Please refer to the VAT and Zones page for more details.
- Cost Account
- Using the 'Paste Special' feature, specify a Cost Account on the 'Accounts' card if the Contact is a Supplier and you would like a particular Cost Account (i.e. Purchase Account) to be offered as a default when you enter new Purchase Invoices. This can be useful in the cases of Suppliers of services such as electricity or telephone services, whose Purchase Invoices are usually debited to the same Account.
- Account Operator
- While on the 'Accounts' card and if the Contact is a Supplier, enter the name of their Bank in the Account Operator field, and their Bank Account Number and their Bank's Sort Code and IBAN Code in the relevant fields. This information will be used if you need to send electronic payments to the Supplier.
- Click the [Save] button in the top right-hand corner of the window. The Contact will be saved in the Contact register.
- The window title will change to 'Contact: Inspect', giving you a chance to check you have not made any mistakes in entering the record.
- Close the record by clicking the close box or using the Ctrl-F4 (Windows and Linux) or ⌘-W (Mac OS X) keyboard shortcut.
- If you have a number of Contacts to enter, select 'New' from the Create menu instead of clicking the [Save] button in step 6 above (or use the Ctrl-N/⌘-N keyboard shortcut). The Contact will be saved and closed, and a blank window will be opened, allowing you to enter another Contact straight away. If you need to enter Customers, it's a good idea in steps 1 and 2 above to open the Contact register from the Sales Ledger or the Sales Orders module. All new records will be marked as Customers automatically. If you need to enter Suppliers, open the Contact register from the Purchase Ledger or the Purchase Orders module to ensure all new records are marked as Suppliers automatically.
It is a good idea to repeat the above process for a few Contacts in order to familiarise yourself both with the data entry process and with the Contact entry screen. However, if you are changing to Standard ERP from another computer program, it is likely that you will want to import your Contacts from a text file created by your old system. If you wish to do this, please follow the import instructions described on the
Importing Set-up Data page to import your text file. This procedure, although described there as being used to import the template Chart of Accounts and other information supplied with Standard ERP, is in fact an all-encompassing import function which will bring in whatever is in the selected text file and save it in the appropriate place in your Standard ERP database. For details of the composition of the text file (field order, etc), please refer to your HansaWorld representative.
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