Customers

The system requires that before you can enter a delivery job you must enter the customer details for the person or organisation requesting the job.  You can do this from the Customers area.  At the first Customers screen you can search for an existing customer by typing any part of their name (either surname or given name).  So, for example, to find John Smith, you can type in either John or Smith (but not both - you can only use one or other of given name or surname) and the system will display a list of all records that match your search.  Type "John" would return all given names containing John as well as surnames such as Johnson.  By default you can search in the name fields, but you can also search by address (including billing address), suburb (including billing suburb) and Delivery Area by using the "in" list box.  You can also search by customer categories and special pricing groups.

From the search screen you can also Add a new customer, Edit an existing customer (you must find the customer you want to edit first by searching for them and highlighting them in the list) or Delete an existing customer.  You can also view the Jobs History for any customer from here.

The Customer entry screen is where you enter/modify the details for each customer.  Most of this information is copied each time you create a new job, so before you enter a new job you should make confirm the details are accurate.  The key fields on this screen are:
Delivery Address - This is where the product will always be delivered to by default.  If the customer is a regular or account customer, this section might be irrelevent since the delivery may go to different addresses each time.  In this case you can leave it blank and fill it in on the Jobs screen.
Account customer - Indicates whether this is an account customer.  This affects the way the customer is billed (on the delivery sheet) and this is copied to each new job for this customer.
Delivery Area - The default delivery area for this customer.  Each customer must be given an area.  This is useful for scheduling jobs later, however a single delivery arae may be specified if this option is not required.
Customer Categories - A customer can be defined as belonging to one or more customer categories.  These are useful for grouping customers together and for searching.
Special Pricing Group - Customers will use the default product pricing value for all new deliveries unless a special pricing group is selected.  This will then force all new jobs to use any special pricing group values instead of the default pricing value.
Outstanding limit - This is the amount of money allowed to be outstanding for this customer.  If this amount is exceeded, the next time a job is created for this customer the system will warn the entry operator that there is money outstanding for this customer, although it will not prevent the new job from being added.  A report showing all outstanding amounts can also be printed.  The default outstanding amount (controlled from the Tools/Options screen) is set to $0 (ie by default all customers must pay their bills immediately) but this can be changed from the Options screen as required.

The Customers screen is also where you add New Jobs for the Customer.  You can not add new jobs from anywhere else in the system - you must be within a customer record, you should check the customer details and then add the job(s).  You can also check the Job History for this customer from here.  This shows all delivery jobs entered for this customer.

Remember - Always check the system by doing a basic search before you enter a new customer, or you might end up with duplicate entries which can be confusing and time consuming.