Open topic with navigation

Customer records

First things first

Before setting up your customer records, make sure you have completed the Customise your company settings tasks. If you have not yet defined these settings, select Help > Customise your company and follow the instructions provided.

Tip: For extra help on setting up records, try the online Sage 50 Accounts Welcome Pages.

Introduction

Customer records are essential for keeping track of your customers, when you want to know what they have bought or what they owe.

Each customer has a separate record that is unique to them. Not only does the record hold contact details, it sets out the way you do business with them, such as their settlement discount or whether sales documents are sent electronically.

When a sales transaction is recorded for the customer, details from their record are used in the calculation to tell what is due and when. Contact details such as an address are used when printing a range of documents, such as invoices or labels.

Each customer record needs a unique reference code. These codes need careful planning as they can’t be changed once any activity has been applied to a record. See Questions and Answers section for more details.

The Ask Sage article on How to Create a New Customer Record is available from here.

You can:

• Save time when recording transactions for a customer by setting options in their record. These are known as defaults and are suggested for use during transaction entry. For example, settlement discount and tax code.
• View the activity on the account, perhaps to check the balance or credit limit. Use the Activity tab in the customer's record.

• Put the customer account on hold to prevent new quotations, sales orders or invoices being raised. This is done on the Credit Control tab of the customer's record.

  Once the account is on hold you can still record a payment from the customer as well as record a sale using batch invoice.

• Add notes to the record, which can be useful if you want to record the last time you contacted them. Or add attachments, such as letters or emails you have received from the customer. Use the Memo tab on the customer's record.

Getting started

From the Customers window, choose Customer Record. A blank customer record window opens. Show me more.

Alternatively, to use a wizard to guide you through the task, click New Customer. The Customer Record wizard appears.

Find out more about the settings on the: Details, Defaults, Credit Control, Sales, Orders, Projects, Graphs, Activity, Bank, Communications, Memo tabs.

Tip: Did you know you can also create customer records using Data Import. This is particularly useful if you are moving from one software provider to Sage software, or when dealing with hundreds of records.