Customer Master Maintenance Screens and Options

The Customer Master Maintenance conversation is used to define all information for a customer, whether that customer will be used as a ship-to or ordered-by location only, or whether it also acts as a bill-to customer. The conversation contains multiple screens, each of which can be accessed separately from the function select screen. The Sales Information and Billing Information screen are shown in the Defining Bill-to, Ship-to, and Ordered-by Customers section. The remaining screens in the Customer Master Maintenance conversation are listed below:

· Credit information. Includes credit limits, dunning information, credit ratings, and VAT or GST information. This information defaults from the Customer Class category (310) if customer classes are used or the Customer Defaults category (029) if customer classes are not used. Information displayed on this screen is stored in the bill-to customer record.

· Draft information. Information used by the Draft Management module to process bank drafts. Information displayed on this screen is stored in the bill-to customer record.

· Sales Information 2. Includes messages to be printed on customer documents, information about when the documents will be printed, fields required for US tax processing, the part validation sequence code, the standing order number for the order copy function, the store number, and information used by the Electronic Data Interchange module. Information displayed on this screen is stored in the ship-to customer record.

When adding a sales order, the store number will default to the Sales Order Maintenance Header where it can be overridden. There will be no validation for the store number. There will not be any prompting associated with this field. The store number will also be displayed on the multi-line, single-line and recap screens and it cannot be modified.

The incoming EDI transaction will receive the store number, but it will not use the store number to retrieve the ship-to customer. The store number is used to reference the ship-to customer's store.

· User-defined fields. Allows you to store custom information for a customer. Literals for the screen fields are defined on Reference File categories D94 - D99. Information displayed on this screen is stored in the ship-to customer record.

This conversation offers you several options for creating ship-to and bill-to customers. The figure below identifies the differences between these methods.

Type of Customer Created	Maintenance Option	Screen Displayed during Definition	Screens Displayed during Inquiry
Ship-to	Add Ship-to	Sales Information	Sales Information Sales Information 2 User-Defined Fields
Ship-to	Copy Ship-to	Sales Information (values for other 2 screens defaulted from reference customer)	Sales Information Sales Information 2 User-Defined Fields
Bill-to	Add Bill-to	Sales Information Billing Information (remaining screens are loaded with default data)	All
Bill-to	Add New Customer	All	All
Bill-to	Copy Bill-to	Sales Information Billing Information (values for all other screens defaulted from reference customer)	All

Customer Master Maintenance Options for Creating Customers

Adding Bill-to Information for an Existing Ship-to Customer

Suppose that you have defined a customer using the Add Ship-to Customer option. This customer cannot be used as a bill-to customer. To add bill-to information for the customer, you would return to the Customer Master Maintenance Function Select screen, enter the ship-to customer number, and choose the Add Billing Information option. This would allow you to enter the minimum required information for the customer to be used as a bill-to customer. Information for the other fields on the file would default. (Default values are retrieved from the Reference File; refer to the Customer Class section of this key concept for more information.) You could then use the Change options on the menu to review and modify the default information.

Primary Bill-to, Ordered-by Customers

When you create a customer, you have the option of assigning a Primary Bill-to and/or Primary ordered-by customer for that new customer.

The Primary Bill-to customer specifies the default Bill-to customer that is associated with a Ship-to customer being used. The Primary ordered-by customer specifies the default ordered-by customer for the Ship-to customer being used.

When entering a sales order, quote order, or postbilling transaction, the Primary Bill-to is defaulted if the Ship-to customer field is not blanks, the Bill-to customer field is blanks, and the Primary Bill-to field in the Ship-to record is not blanks.

When entering a sales order, quote order, or postbilling transaction, the Primary ordered-by customer is defaulted if the Ship-to customer field is not blanks, the Ordered-by customer field is blanks, and the Primary Ordered-by field in the Ship-to record is not blanks.

In Customer Master Maintenance, when you add or copy a Ship-to customer, the Primary Bill-to and Primary ordered-by fields are defaulted to blanks. When you add a new customer, or, add or copy a Bill-to customer, the new customer will be defaulted to the Primary Bill-to customer, and the Primary ordered-by customer will be defaulted to blanks. These fields are optional, and may be changed on the Sales Information screen.

The Primary Bill-to customer must exist on the Bill-to customer file. The Primary ordered-by customer is validated if the flag in Reference File category 447 is set to yes. If the Primary Ordered-by customer is validated, it must exist on the Ship-to customer file.

The validation of the Ordered-by, Ship-to, and Bill-to customer fields were summarized previously in How Ship-to and Bill-to Customers Can Be Used in the Defining Bill-to, Ship-to, and Ordered-by Customers section.

Customer Status

When you define a customer, it has the status of active. If a customer is an active ship-to customer, it can be specified as the ship-to location on a sales order. If a customer is an active bill-to customer, it can be specified as either the ship-to or bill-to location. The customer's status will remain active until you take action to deactivate or delete it.

Deactivating, Reactivating, and Deleting Customers

MAC-PAC allows you to deactivate customers so that orders can no longer be entered for them. There are two deactivation options: deactivate bill-to and deactivate ship-to. Deactivating the bill-to customer means that the customer can no longer be specified as a bill-to location but can still be specified as a ship-to location. Deactivating the ship-to customer means that the customer cannot be used as either a ship-to or bill-to location. Note that deactivating a customer does not cause any information to be deleted. You can return a customer to its former active status by using the reactivate options.

To delete customer records from the system, you must select one of the Delete options on the Customer Master Maintenance Function Select screen. The Delete Bill-to option deletes only the bill-to record, leaving the ship-to record for the customer. Therefore, you can delete a bill-to customer and still specify it as the ship-to location for an order. The Delete Ship-to option deletes the ship-to record for the customer. Once the ship-to information is deleted for a customer, it cannot be used as a bill-to or ship-to customer.

When the customer files are purged, deleted bill-to and ship-to records are physically deleted from the system. In addition, the related bill-to and ship-to relationship records will be deleted. Note that you will not be able to delete a customer if there is any activity in the system for the specified customer. For example, you cannot delete the customer if it has any open orders or invoices.

When you stop doing business with a customer, there are two ways to prevent users from entering new orders for that customer: placing the customer on hold through the Customer Master File or deactivating the customer. In general, you would place an order hold on the customer if any credit problems appear with that customer. Placing a customer on hold (through the Customer Master File) will place a hold on all open orders. You would deactivate a customer who has not placed an order in a long time. Deactivated customers do not appear on customer reports. After a customer has been inactive for a period of time, you may wish to delete the customer.

Option Used in Customer Maintenance	Used as Ship-to?	Used as Ordered-by?	Used as Bill-to?
Deactivate Bill-to	Yes	Yes	No
Deactivate Ship-to	No	No	No
Reactivate Bill-to	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reactivate Ship-to	Yes	Yes	No
Delete Bill-to	Yes	Yes	No
Delete Ship-to	No	No	No

Authorization for Customer Master Maintenance Conversation

You can limit which users have authority to each option on the Customer Master Maintenance Function Select screen. This authority is specified on Reference File category 332. If a record exists on 332 for a user signon ID, that user will be limited to the options specified on that record. If no record exists for a user ID, then the user will be authorized to use all options.