33 Customers and vendors 33.3 Contact Search 33.5 Multiple customers within one company

33.4 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

33.4.1 Creating a Company

To create a company navigate to Contacts $\rightarrow$ Add Entity $\rightarrow$ 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.
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.

The Retrieve button is discussed in Section 33.6 on page 33.6.

The Save button creates the company.

33.4.2 Creating a customer account

When a company has been created then “Customer” or “Vendor” Credit Account can be added. The Credit Accounts 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: If printed checks are used, then this line is the Pay To line on the check. It also shows up when picking a customer with multiple credit accounts
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 41 starting at page 41
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
Account: Account used to post discounts as calculated based on discount conditions
AR or AP: For customers, the Receivables G/L Account (AR) used to post created sales invoices on. For vendors, the Payables G/L Account (AP) used as default to post received purchase order invoices on. Only one of AP or AR is shown.
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 43.7.2 on page 43.7.2 Chapter 26 starting at page 26

33.4.3 Creating a vendor account

The only difference between creating a customer account and a vendor account is the Class and the selection of AP or AR G/L accounts. See Section 33.4.2 on page 33.4.2 for setting up a customer account.