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Introduction to Customers, Suppliers and Contact Persons in Standard Accounts

This section describes the Contact register in Standard Accounts and Standard Stock. If you are using any other Standard product, please click here.

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Information about your Customers, Suppliers, Contact Persons and all other companies and individuals with whom you have some contact is stored in the Contact register. You only need maintain a single record for a company who is both a Customer and a Supplier.

Throughout this manual, 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. As soon as contact is established between your business and a potential client or supplier, you should record their details in the Contact register. 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 "Customer" is usually used when describing the use of a record in the Contact 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.

The term "Contact Person" is used in this manual 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 term "Contact" is used in this manual when referring to any record in 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 the same Category will be given the same default Debtor Account, saving you the work of having to specify this for each one individually.You will often be able to report on the Customers belonging to a particular Category. Before entering Customers, therefore, it is recommended that you enter some Customer Categories. Customer Categories are described here.

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 Creditor Account, saving you the work of having to specify this 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. Supplier Categories are described here.

Before working with Contacts, you should also look at the following settings and registers:

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