Customers

Customers are an important part of your business. Acctivate allows you to setup and manage customer data and then create sales quotes, orders, credit memos and invoices for your customers.

Customer List

The Customer list can be found by clicking Customers in the left menu of Acctivate. The Customer list window is made up of four primary sections:

• Search Bar, Sort and Filters
• List of Customer Names
• Customer Attributes
• Customer Information

Tip

When viewing the list of customers, this window is commonly referred to as the Customer list. It's also acceptable to refer to this window as the Customer window when viewing a single customer. The Edit Customer window, previously mentioned, is a separate window that is used for adding or updating customer information. In order to eliminate any confusion, it's best to use the appropriate name when referencing either of these windows.

Search Bar and Sort

The upper left-hand corner of the Customer list contains a Search bar which will filter down the Customer list as you type. The following fields are searched:

• Customer Name
• Company Name
• Company Email
• Company Phone
• Billing City
• Billing State
• Billing Zip
• Billing Country

You can also sort the Customer list by clicking the "Sort" text. The arrow next to the text will point up or down to indicate whether the list is sorting ascending or descending.

Filters

Above the search bar is a drop-down menu allowing you to select standard or custom filters. The Customer list has two standard filters which are visible to all users:

• Active Only: Displays all the customers which are active.
• All Customers: Displays all active and inactive customers.

You can also create custom filters:

1. Click the Filter button.
2. In the Filter Editor window, click the + symbol to add filter expressions.
3. Once you've added all the filter expressions, click one of the buttons:
   • OK: This will apply your filters and close the Filter Editor. This filter will not be saved, but it will remain in place until you select another standard or custom filter. The filter menu will display "Custom Filter..." to indicate a custom filter is applied.
   • Apply: This will apply your filters, but it keeps the Filter Editor open so you can further adjust the filters.
   • Save As: This allows you to save this filter for use again in the future. When you choose this option, you must enter a Filter Name and you have the option to select the Available for all users checkbox. If left unchecked, this filter will only be available for the user who created it.

Edit, delete, or share an existing filter
Once you've created a filter, you can edit, delete, or make the filter shared with everyone.

1. In the saved filter drop down list, select your filter.
2. Click the Filter button to open the Filter Editor.
3. Click the downward arrow next to the Save button to see a list of options:
   • Save as New Filter...: Use this to copy this filter as a new filter. You can add additional filter expressions before or after this step.
   • Share filter with everyone: This option is available if the filter is not already shared with everyone. If a filter is shared with everyone, the text Shared will appear next to the Save button.
   • Rename Filter...: If this option is selected, you will be prompted to enter the new filter name.
   • Delete Filter: This will delete the saved filter.

Note

Once a filter is shared with everyone, it cannot be un-shared. However, you can copy the shared filter as a new filter that is not shared, then delete the original shared filter.

List of Customers

There are four key pieces of information on display in the list of customers.

• Customer name
• Company name
• Customer balance
• Customer credit status (Over Limit, Overdue, Credit Hold).

Note

QuickBooks Online Projects sync to Acctivate for use on sales documents, payments, and Inventory Issues, however they are not available to view in the Customer list.

Toolbar

The Toolbar of the Customer window allows you to perform various actions, such as printing and emailing customer, performing a Price Check, creating customer detail records and transactions, and attaching documents.

Sidebar

The right sidebar of the Customer window includes key information relating to the customer and their recent activity. Information includes the customer's Sales Summary, Balance and terms, recent activity (last three orders by order date, invoices by invoice date, unpaid invoices by invoice date, payments by payment date), and created/updated info.

Account

The Account tab shows primary customer information grouped into different cards for easy viewing of customer information.

Customer Summary
The Customer Summary includes an overview of customer activity. For details, view the Transactions tab.

Bill To
The Bill To card displays the billing address and contact.

The recommended address format in Acctivate includes the recipient on line 1 and the street address should start on line 2. Additionally, it's recommended that you use the 3-letter ISO (International Organization for Standardization) codes for countries, and the 2-letter ISO code for states, provinces, and territories.

For more information on formatting addresses, refer to our Tips for proper address formatting KB

• QuickBooks Desktop
  Address fields will sync bidirectionally between QuickBooks Desktop and Acctivate.

• QuickBooks Online
  In order to construct the recommended address format in QuickBooks Online companies, the Company name field in QuickBooks Online will sync to Acctivate's Company field and address line 1 if address line 1 in Acctivate matches the Company name.

  If the customer doesn't have a Company name defined, then the customer's Display name will be used as address line 1 if address line 1 in Acctivate matches the customer's Display name.

  If Address line 1 in Acctivate doesn't match the Company or Display name in QuickBooks Online, then updates to the Company/Display name field in QuickBooks Online will not be synchronized to Address line 1 in Acctivate. Edits to Address 1 in Acctivate will never sync back to QuickBooks Online.

  The customer's street address 1 and 2 in QuickBooks Online will by synchronized to address 2 and 3 in Acctivate (and updates in Acctivate will sync back to QuickBooks Online with these mappings as well).

Ship To
The Ship To card displays the preferred Ship To location and its contact info. You can click the Ship To location name in the upper right to switch to another location, or use the Ship To tab to view more shipping details.

Account Info
The Account Info card displays information about the customer's account, including the Alternate Customer ID, Branch, Tax Code and exemption, and their preferred Price Code.

Sales Info
The Sales Info displays lifetime sales as well as the customer salesperson and marketing list.

Credit
The Credit card will show the current credit usage and available credit limit, if applicable.

The upper right hand corner will display the customer's credit hold status if Customer Credit Evaluation Options are enabled. If a customer's invoice has the In Dispute checkbox checked, that invoice will be removed from the customer's credit evaluation.

In QuickBooks Desktop Acctivate companies, the credit limit field syncs bidirectionally. However, while the Credit Limit field exists in QuickBooks Online, the QuickBooks Online API does not support syncing this field, therefore changes to a customer's credit limit should be made in Acctivate and in QuickBooks Online if necessary.

The customer's terms code is also displayed here. New Terms Codes or changes to existing terms code definitions are made in QuickBooks.

The customer's Account Number will be displayed here and syncs with QuickBooks. The Account Number is one of the values used to match a customer when importing in sales orders. This field is used to store:

• Account Numbers generated by your company for your customers.
• Account Number provided by your customer to be included on invoices.
• Account Number to link to other business system(s).

Other fields such as the date opened, credit review date, ownership style, etc. are for refernece purposes only.

Contracts
The Contracts card will appear if a pricing contract exists for this customer.

Contracts can be used with customer specific product pricing or they can be used independent of products. If not used with products, a Contract can give different terms or default an invoice discount percentage. You will be asked if you'd like to choose a contract when you create a sales document if a contract exists and is valid (the sales document date is between the Begin and End dates of the contract).

Preferred Payment
The Preferred Payment card displays the customer's preferred payment method. When entering a sales order or creating an invoice, selecting the payment type of the the preferred payment will default the payment details (e.g. credit card number, cc exp, cc name, etc.) onto the Payments tab of the order or payment section of the Create Invoice window. Saved credit card numbers are encrypted at the highest level and never printed in entirety. Also, specific users can be given or denied access to saved credit card information through the customer "Credit Card Information" permission in Acctivate. If the Copy Acctivate credit card information to QuickBooks option is enabled, credit card information saved in Acctivate will sync to the customer window in QuickBooks.

Instructions
The Instructions Card displays the default Invoice Text and Customer Note.

Acctivate's default invoice form has a space reserved to display the customer specific invoice text.

The Customer Note will appear on the Customer tab of the customer's sales documents. If configured to popup, Popup will be displayed and this note will "popup" on screen every time the customer is added to a sales order or a sales order with this customer is opened.

Timeline

The Timeline tab gives a list of all activity for the customer, sequenced by date and time. You can use the Type list and Look for search box to filter the list of activity.

Transactions

The Transactions tab displays the Orders, Accounts Receivable Transactions, and Products purchased.

• Open: The Open button shows open sales orders, invoices with a balance, and unapplied payments and credits.
• Orders: The Orders button shows all sales activity.
• A/R: The A/R button shows all accounts receivable activity, such as invoices and payments.
• Products: The Products button displays every instance of ever product purchased by this customer.

System administrators can use the Columns button to choose which columns are visible to Acctivate users.

Open
The Open button gives a unified look at open transactions for this customer and therefore only columns that are common to sales orders, invoices, and unapplied payments and credits are displayed.

The Open Amount column represents the balance.

Orders
The Orders button displays all sales order activity for this product. Create custom filters to filter on certain types or statuses.

PO refers to the customer PO number.

The Reference and Reference 2 column come from the Sales Order header.

Refer to the Sales Orders documentation for field definitions.

A/R
The A/R button displays activity that impacts accounts receivable. This includes invoices, payments, and journals.

Products
The Products tab displays a row for each product sold to the customer. Each row is based off of sales invoice details.

Ship To

The Ship To tab shows all Ship To locations for the customer.

A location can be have its shipments put on hold during a date range. Orders with this ship to location will be placed on a Hold Status until after the "till" date or the hold is released on the Customer tab of the Sales Order.

EDI column
If the customer is mapped to an EDI trading partner, certain ship to configuration is available for EDI orders.

• This location is a Distribution Center: This option is only evaluated when the ShipToDistributionCenter option is enabled for this customer's trading partner. When defined as a Distribution Center it is able to be associated with other ship to locations (store locations). (see "This location is serviced by Distribution Center" below).
• This location is serviced by Distribution Center: This option is only evaluated when the ShipToDistributionCenter option is enabled for this customer's trading partner. If this customer's EDI 850 transaction file does not contain a Ship To location, but contains a Mark for Store location, the ship to address on the sales order will default to the DC location that is configured for the store's Location ID.
• Default Warehouse: A default warehouse can be defined for EDI orders using this ship to location.

Note

Multiple customers in Acctivate can be associated with a single trading partner. When importing in an 850 transaction file, the Mark for Store location (Header Row, Position 15) will be compared against each customer associated with the 850's trading partner in order to select the correct customer for the imported Sales Order.

If the 850's Ship To Location (Header Row, Position 41) is setup as a location, then that location will be used as the Ship To location for the sales order (typically this would be a distribution center that services the store). The Store location will be referenced on the Additional Info tab of the Enter Sales Order window.

Contacts

The Contacts tab shows all additional contacts that have been created for the customer. If there are no contacts then this tab will not be shown.

Add a Contact

1. Select Contact from the Create menu at the top of the Customer window.
2. Type in the Contact Name. When you tab out, a unique ContactID will be created. You can alter it as long it remains unique.
3. Optionally, enter a Title and other contact info; e.g., email and email description. Use Save & Close or select Save & New from the sub-menu.

Edit or Delete a Contact or make a Contact inactive

1. Mouse over a row in the Contacts grid. In the far left column you will see a pencil icon, click it to open the window.
2. Make any necessary changes and click Save & Close (or Save & New). You can delete the contact by clicking the Delete button in the lower left hand corner, or you can make the contact inactive by unchecking the Active checkbox in the upper right.

Product IDs

The Product IDs tab displays the relationships between your customer's product IDs and your product IDs. These customer IDs are evaluated when entering or importing in sales orders for a customer. The customer's product ID will be converted to the Acctivate Product ID.

When entering a sales document, if a Customer Product ID on this tab is entered into the sales order for the customer, the Customer Product ID will automatically get converted to the Acctivate Product ID.

Add a Customer Product ID

1. Select Customer Product ID from the Create menu at the top of the Customer window.
2. Type in the Acctivate Product ID, then type in the Customer Product ID.
3. Optionally, enter enter a description for the Customer Product ID and a note. Use Save & Close or select Save & New from the sub-menu.

Edit or Delete a Customer Product ID

1. Mouse over a row in the Product IDs grid. In the far left column you will see a pencil icon, click it to open the window.
2. Make any necessary changes and click Save & Close (or Save & New). You can delete the contact by clicking the Delete button in the lower left hand corner.

Prices

The Prices tab shows all customer specific price rules for the customer. If there are no customer specific prices then this tab will not be shown.

Product prices will be shown in one grid while price categories will be displayed in a separate grid.

Product prices and Price Categories can be associated with a contract, however the pricing rule will only apply when that Contract is selected on a sales document.

A product can be assigned a specific price code which the customer should receive for this product, regardless of their default price code. Alternatively, a customer specif price can be assigned, designated by the ! code.

Jobs

If this customer is configured to have jobs, the Jobs tab shows the job names for this customer as well as their billing address.

Creating a New Customer

Your customer list is synchronized between Acctivate and QuickBooks. Because of this, a customer can be added into either program and it will ultimately make its way to the other program after a sync. That being said, there are more customer attributes in Acctivate, many which are specific to Acctivate, therefore it is recommended that new customers are added in Acctivate.

Customers can be created in various ways; however, most users will find the following methods are the most common way to start the creation of a new Customer in Acctivate:

• Start with the Customer list:

  1. Open the Customer list in the left menu.
  2. Click the +New Customer button at the bottom of the list.

• Start with the Edit Customer window:

  1. Select Edit Customer from the Customer menu at the top of Acctivate.
  2. Click New in the window that appears.

In addition to the above steps, there are additional ways to create a Customer:

• Create a customer from a sales quote, sales order or credit memo.
• Create a customer as part of importing a Sales Order from a Web Store Integration.
• Create a customer as part of importing a Sales Order from a text or data file.

Editing a Customer

There are three ways to begin editing an existing customer in Acctivate:

• Start in the Customer List found in the left menu.
  • In the left menu of Acctivate, click on Customer to open the Customer list.
  • Click the Edit button.
  • The Edit Customer window will open in edit mode allowing you to edit data.
• Start in the Edit Customer window.
  • Using the top menu, navigate to Customer → Edit Customer.
  • The Edit Customer window will appear, type in the Customer ID or use the magnifying glass lookup to find and select your product.
  • Click Edit.
  • You will be able to edit the customer data.
• Import in customer updates from a text or data file.

Customer Export

Your customer list can be exported to a .csv file using the Export Customer list function:

1. First, select the customer fields to be included in the export.
2. From the menu bar of Acctivate, select File → Export Customer list to open the Export Customer list window.
3. The Export Destination field will default if configured, otherwise use the lookup to enter a name and select a location for export.
4. Click Export.

Create Mailing List

The Create Mailing List feature in Acctivate allows you to use selection criteria to select customers to be included for export into a .csv file. This file will contain billing contact information which can be used with Microsoft Word mail merge to create mailing labels.

To create a mailing list:

1. From the menu bar of Acctivate, select Customer → Create Mailing List to open the Create Mailing List wizard.
2. On the Qualifications screen you can select the selection criteria to be used in determining the recipients. Click Add and select a field you wish to filter on. Once you've added a field, you can use the filters that appear to the right of it. Multiple fields can be added on this screen.
3. After entering all the selection criteria, click Next>> to proceed.
4. On the Review screen, you will see the list of customers that will be included based on the selection criteria. Click Next>> to proceed.
5. On the Note screen, you can enter a Note that will be added to the Customer tab of the Edit Customer window. Click Next>>. The note will appear as "List: {The entered text}"
6. On the Export List screen, use the lookup button (...) to lookup a save location. Click Export.
7. After the export has completed, click Finished.

The mailing list will include the following fields:

Export Field	Acctivate Field
Customer Name	Customer Name.
Address Name	Billing address line 1.
Address1	Billing address line 2.
Address2	Billing address line 3.
Address3	Billing address line 4.
City	Billing address city.
State	Billing address state.
Products#product	Billing address zip.
Country	Billing address country
Salutation	Billing contact salutation.
FirstName	Billing contact first name.
MiddleName	Billing contact middle name.
LastName	Billing contact last name.
Suffix	Billing contact suffix.
CreatedDate	Date the customer was created.
LastSalesOrderDate	Date of last sales order or quote.
MarketingCode	The Marketing Code assigned on the Sales tab of the Edit Customer window.

Broadcast Email Messages

The Broadcast Email Message feature in Acctivate allows you to create and send an email to a group of customers that meet certain selection criteria. Email must be configured in Acctivate.

Warning

Emails sent from Acctivate are sent through your configured email account. Your email provider may impose limits for the number of emails that can be sent in a period of time, such as per day or per hour. These limits are to prevent spamming and they are not specific to emails sent from Acctivate, but rather any emails sent from your email account. Acctivate has no control over these limits so exercise caution when using the Broadcast Email Messages function as your email provider may enabled restrictions if a threshold is met.

To create an email message for broadcasting:

1. From the menu bar of Acctivate, select Customer → Broadcast Email Messages to open the Create Mailing List wizard.
2. On the Qualifications screen you can select the selection criteria to be used in determining the recipients. First, choose a Selection Source. This will determine which fields are available for filtering.
3. After selection the Selection Source, click Add and select a field you wish to filter on. Once you've added a field, you can use the filters that appear to the right of it. Multiple fields can be added on this screen.
4. After entering all the selection criteria, click Next>> to proceed.
5. On the Review screen, you will see the list of customers that will be included based on the selection criteria. You can deselect any customers that you do not want to email. Only customers that have an email address saved on the Customer's tab of the Edit Customer window will be included. Click Next>> to proceed.
6. On the Message screen, you will compose the message that will be sent to all customers that appeared in the Review screen.
   • You must enter a Subject. In the Message field, you can enter the message text.
   • Optionally, you can add an Attachment.
   • Optionally, A Note can automatically be added to either the Customer tab or Credit tab of the Edit Customer window. If you choose to add a note, you can choose what should be included in the Note; the Subject, Subject and Text, or Custom. If you select Custom a text field will be exposed. The text written in this field will be added as the note text. Notes added will appear as "Email: {The type of text selected}"
7. After composing the email, click Next>>.
8. You will have a chance to review the message. If everything looks good, click Next>> to proceed.
9. On the Send Emails screen, click Send Emails.

Tip

You can also export some grids, export Reports, query data in Excel.