34 Customers and vendors 34.1 Introduction 34.3 Multiple customers within one company

34.2 Creating customers and vendors

The typical procedure to create customers and vendors works exactly alike:

1.

Create the contact as a company
2.

Create credit accounts
3.

Attach addresses, contact info and notes to the accounts

34.2.1 Creating a Company

To create a company navigate to Main Menu $\rightarrow$ Contacts $\rightarrow$ Add Contact $\rightarrow$ Company Tab.

The company tab has the following fields:

Control code: Code to uniquely identify this entity. This is usually generated by clicking on Generate Control Code button. It is also generated automatically when clicking the Save button.
Class: The type of entity; vendor, customer, etc. Required, but defaults to a known value so it needs to be checked.
Name: Legal name of the company. Required.
Country: Country of incorporation. Required, but defaults to a known value so it needs to be checked.
Tax number/SSN: Tax (VAT/Sales tax) number of the company.
Sales Tax ID: The sales tax reporting number.
License Number: The company operating license number.

The Generate Control Code button generates a new control code upon user request when the user is entering a company which isn’t yet known in the system in any other role.

The Retrieve button is discussed in Section 34.4 on page 34.4.

The Save button creates the account.

34.2.2 Creating a customer account

When a contact of class “Customer” or “Vendor” has been created, accounts of that type can be added. The account entry screen lists the following fields¹¹ 1 To simplify the interface if they’re unused, some fields are not shown in case their selection lists are empty:

Class: Either a customer or vendor
Number: Number to identify this account among all other accounts in the company; when left empty, the system will generate one when you click “Save New”
Description: Textual representation of the account, usually a name
Pay To: @@@TODO
Starting Date: Date from which the account is valid
End date: Date until which the account is valid, or empty if there’s no known end date
Threshold: Minimum amount for invoices to be sent out
Credit limit: Maximum amount of open invoices and orders allowed for the account, see Chapter 42 starting at page 42
Payment Terms: Number of days within which invoices have to be paid
Discount (conditions): Percentage discount the account is entitled to when payment is within the given number of days
Discount (account): Account used to post discounts as calculated based on discount conditions
AR: For customers, the Receivables G/L Account used to post created sales invoices on
AP: For vendors the Payables G/L Account used as default to post received purchase order invoices on
Payment: Which bank account to use when receiving or paying funds
Currency: The default currency to be used with the customer or vendor
Language: The language parameter is used to select templates for communication with the customer
Taxes: The applicable tax form for this vendor; tax forms are discussed in more detail in Section 44.7.2 on page 44.7.2 Chapter 27 starting at page 27

34.2.3 Creating a vendor account

Generally the only difference between creating a customer account and a vendor account is the Class and the use of AP or AR G/L accounts. See Section 34.2.2 on page 34.2.2 for setting up a customer account.