Maintain Customers/Prospects

After we have set up a company and its charts of accounts, now its time to establish subsidiary ledgers for Accounts Receivable.  Use the Maintain Customers/Prospects window to enter, change, and store information about companies and people to whom you sell goods and services. You can also enter information about companies and people with whom you would like to do business for customers, this includes information such as:

·         Name and address information, including, e-mail address, and Web site address

·         The date of the last invoice, statement, and payment received

·        year-to-date and period-to-date sales and monthly totals

·          usual sales account used for this customer

·         The preferred method of payment for customer

·         Terms of payment and the sales tax code

·         The customer's beginning balance

Subsidiary ledgers for Accounts Receivables are maintained through “Customer/Prospect” option in Maintain Menu. we will click on Maintain menu and then on Charts of Accounts.

Following window will appear:

                                                    

Customer header fields are located above the folder tabs of the maintain. This is where you enter lookup information about the customer such as the customer ID, name, and status.

Customer id: Enter up to 20 characters for a new customer's ID. For existing customers, you can select to look up the customer you want.  You cannot use *,?, or + in the code. It's important to use consistent and logical coding. Below is an example of a good coding system:

General

To enter basic information about the customer such as contact information, address, phone and fax numbers, sales tax code, and beginning balances, select the General tab in the Maintain Customers/Prospects window

Sales default

     

To set up unique sales transaction defaults for each customer record, select the sales default  tab in the Maintain Customers/Prospects window. You can change this information at the transaction level, if necessary. You can enter the sales representative that has contact with the customer. The sales representative must have already been entered in the Maintain Employees/Sales Reps window.

General ledger sales account:

 Enter a General Ledger account for the default sales account for this customer. This is normally an income account. When selling inventory items, Peachtree overrides this account with the General Ledger default accounts set up in Maintain Inventory Items.
Open P.O. #:

 This is the standing purchase order number you can use for this customer. This defaults on the Quotes, Sales Orders, and Sales/Invoicing windows.
Ship Via:

 You can select the primary shipping carrier you want to use to ship items to this customer. Whatever you select here will default for sales transactions you enter for this customer. Shipping carriers are set up in the Inventory Items Defaults window.
Resale #;

If this customer purchases items for resale, enter the resale number here. Resale numbers are required by most states for businesses that sell taxable goods. It enables the business to sell goods to other businesses for resale without charging a tax or to buy goods from other businesses for resale without paying a tax. If a customer intends to resell your goods, enter the customer's resale number (also called seller's permit) here.
Pricing Level: 

You can choose from various pricing levels that are set up in the Maintain Inventory Items window when invoicing your customers. Price level names are set up on the Price Level tab of the Inventory Item Defaults window.
Terms

: You can choose to use the standard customer payment terms set up in Customers Defaults or set up a unique set of terms for this customer. To change the payment terms for this customer, select the Terms button.
Form Delivery Options:

 This group box includes options that determine how forms are delivered to customers either when you choose the E-mail button on task windows or print forms from the Select a Report window. For a list of customer forms that can be sent by e-mail,

         Delivery method

: Choose either paper forms or e-mail. Whenever you print a form in bulk from the Select a Report window, your choice will determine whether the form is printed for mailing OR automatically sent as an e-mail attachment to this specific customer.

Payment Defaults

To set up customized receipt settings for each customer record, select the Payment Defaults tab in the Maintain Customers/Prospects window. You can change this information if necessary.
Cardholder's Name:

 Choose the credit card you want to use as this customer’s default, and enter the name as it appears on the credit card in the Cardholder’s Name field.
Address:

 Enter the customer’s billing address. As the default, the address fields (address lines 1 and 2, city, state, ZIP Code and country) will initially display the information you entered as the Bill to Address on the General tab.
Credit Card Number:

 Allows you to enter a default credit card number to use for this customer. You can enter dashes, spaces, or slashes as separators. The credit card number in the Payment Defaults tab will be displayed unencrypted. Therefore, you may want to control user access to the Payment Defaults tab. You can give users No Access or Full access to the Customer Payment Defaults program area. For more information about limiting access to certain areas of Peachtree Accounting click .
Expiration Date

: Enter the expiration date listed on the front of the customer’s credit card. Enter the expiration date using the month/year (MM/YY) format. Expiration years (YY) appear as two digits (for example, 03 represents 2003). If a card expiration date is 5/31/03, enter 05/03.
Receipt setting:

 In the Receipt Settings area of the Payment Defaults tab, you can specify the default payment settings for the selected customer. By default, the Use Receipt window settings box is checked. When checked, the Payment Method and Cash Account fields in the Receipts and Receive Payment windows default to those on the last saved receipt.
To customize the receipt settings for the selected customer, uncheck the Use Receipt window settings check box and select your desired options from the Payment Method and Cash Account lists. The next time you create a receipt for this customer, or receive a payment through the Sales/Invoicing window, the customized receipt settings will appear.

Custom Fields

To enter custom field information for the selected customer record, select the Custom Fields tab in the Maintain Customers/Prospects window.

History

To display the selected customer's current history, select the History tab in the Maintain Customers/Prospects window. When entering a new customer, you can enter information on this tab; once you save the customer record, this tab is for display purposes only.
Customer Since: This is the date when you first made a sale to the customer.
Last Invoice Date:  the date of the last invoice you sent to the customer.
Last Invoice Amt:  the amount of the last invoice.
Last Payment Date:  the date of the last payment you received from the customer.
Last Payment Amt: the last payment amount you received from the customer.
Last Statement Date:  the date of the last statement you sent to the customer.