Answer: Although there are many needs that customers face, Solid Route Accounting™ business systems can meet those needs within their three main customer types. These customer types are Independent customers, Head Office customers, and Branch Office customers. Within these three customer types, most any configuration for billing can be created.
- Independent customers are customers that inventory is delivered to, and that pay for their own invoices. These customers are the easiest to set up since they require no special configuration.
- Head Office customers are typically the top of a store chain, and usually have Branch Office customers assigned to them. Head Offices will often handle all invoice payments for deliveries to their Branch Office customers.
- Branch Office customers are assigned to a Head Office customer, and although inventory is delivered directly to their locations, the payment of invoices is often handled by their Head Office customer account.
Using the appropriate customer type for each customer record will make invoicing a breeze and make the company look professional. We recommend creating Head Office records prior to making their Branch Office records as doing so will allow Branch Office customers to be assigned to their Head Offices as they're being created. Follow the steps below for the Solid Route Accounting business system being used to create these different types of customer records.
Enterprise Edition Users:
All customer records are added in Solid Business Central™ by going to [Datafile / Customer / View] and using the [Insert] key twice to present a new record.
- For Independent customers, leave 'H/O' as N, and leave the field next to it blank. When all else is entered, use [CTRL+END] to save this record as an Independent customer. Notice that when viewing this record now, the field next to the 'H/O' field has this customer's own customer number in it to indicate that they pay their own invoices.
- For Head Office customers, set the 'H/O' field to Y, and leave the field next to it blank. When all else is entered, use [CTRL+END] to save this record as a Head Office customer. Notice that when viewing this record, the field next to the 'H/O' field now has this customer's own customer number in it to indicate that they pay their own invoices as well. We recommend that after creating a Head Office customer, view that customer's record and write down their customer number. This will make it easier when creating their Branch Office customers to assign them to this Head Office customer's account.
- For Branch Office customers, leave the 'H/O' field as N, and in the field to the right of this, enter in their Head Office's customer number to tell Enterprise Edition that this customer record is a branch store of that Head Office's customer record. In addition to these fields, Branch Office customers can also control if billing is handled by this Branch Office or its Head Office by setting the 'BillTo' field to H for Head Office or B for Branch Office. Once these settings are in place, use [CTRL+END] to continue.