Create or amend customer accounts

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Open: Customers > Create & Amend Accounts > Create Customer

Open: Customers > Create & Amend Accounts > Amend Customer Details

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Create a customer (video)

How to

Create or amend a customer account

Enter your customer's information on the following tabs:

Company	The customer's name and address details. The code, name and address are used for printing details on reports, and invoices and mailing labels. The account Code can be up to eight characters long, and use letters, numbers or both.
Contacts	Add contact details for different people for this customer; such as telephone number, mobile, fax, email address, website address. See Customer contacts.
Trading	Your customer's VAT details, the default nominal account and the analysis code values.
Payment	The settlement discount details payment terms. These are taken from the customer default settings. You can also upload the customer details to the Invoice Payments service.
Credit	The credit reference information about the customer. If you use a credit control agency, set the agency's reference here.
Documents	The statement, sales invoice and credit note document templates to be used when these documents are printed from Sage 200. Note: These stationery formats and discounts only apply to invoices that are printed from Sage 200.
Attachments	Files and documents about the customer. These can be actual files or links to files. The file name can't have more than 150 characters. If a file extension is more than 150 characters, the file can't be saved.
Memo	Comments about the customer's account, such as reminders about issues that should be taken into consideration when contacting the customer.
Pricing	The pricing and discount details for this customer. You can change the discount and price bands the customer belongs to from here and set Invoice and line discounts.
Alerts	Alerts are messages that are displayed when you select a customer account, so you can set up reminders for a particular customer. You can show alerts when entering invoices or credit notes, sales orders and returns, quotations and pro forma invoices, and for customer price enquiries.

You must enter a code and name before you can save a new account.

Make changes to an account

Any changes you make to an account will only affect transactions that you enter after you've made the changes. For example, if you change the settlement discount details, this doesn't affect the discount details already entered on transactions.

• You can't change the account Code once the account has been saved. If you've entered a code incorrectly and haven't entered any transactions for it, delete the account and recreate it.

Once transactions have been entered for an account:

• You can't change the currency.
• You can't delete the account.

Duplicate a customer account

You can create a new customer account by copying an existing account. The new account will have the same Trading, Payment, and Documents details as the original account. You can choose to copy other details from the existing account, such as memos and attachments.

Duplicating an account can be useful if your customer uses different currencies or is migrating to the euro, and you want to create copies of the existing account to use with the new currency.

Note: Transactions associated with the original account are not copied to the new account.

Tip: To check if an account was created as a duplicate, use Customer Enquiry to view the account and look for a Linked Customer account on the General tab.

Open: Customers > Create & Amend Accounts > Create Customer

1. Enter a Code for the new account you want to create.
2. Click Duplicate.

3. Select the customer account that you want to duplicate.

   • To check the account you've selected, select View Detail.

   • If you can't see an account, you might have set its Active Status to Hidden. To change an account's status, see Change customer account status (hide or put on hold).

4. Select which information should be copied to the new customer account.

   • Make a euro duplicate will set the new account's currency to use the euro.
   • You can choose to duplicate memos, attachments, credit information, contact information, and alerts.
5. Click OK to create the new account.
6. Edit the new account if required.

Import, export and update accounts

If you need to add or update a large number of customer accounts, it might be quicker for you to import them in Sage 200.

You can also export accounts to a file in the same format used for an import. This means you can export information and make changes to it using an external tool (such as Excel), and then import your updated information back into Sage 200.

See Import and export customer accounts.

Delete an account

If you've entered an account in error, you can delete it as long as transactions have not been posted to the account.

If you have posted transactions to the account, the Delete button will not be available, but you can hide the account instead.

Hide an account

Hiding an account will remove the account from the customer list, so it can't be selected by accident.

Open: Customers > Credit Control > Amend Customer Status

• To hide an account, select the account and set the Active Status to Hidden.

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Useful info

About analysis codes

Analysis codes are extra pieces of information that you can use as custom fields, to improve your reporting and to compare different areas of your business.

You can have 20 analysis codes for each area.

An analysis code has two parts:

• Code or Name - this a label and represents how you want to group your data.

• Value - this can be a set of predefined values or free text. This is how you want to break down the data for each group.

You create the analysis codes and their associated values on the Analysis Codes screen.

On each customer account, you can choose the value that you want to associate with each code.

For example, if you want to group accounts by location, for a customer located in Birmingham, you would choose Midlands as the value for a Region analysis code. You can then report on your data by all customers in the Midlands region.

Setting credit limits

You can set a credit limit on a customer's account to help you control the customer's debt.

Once the customer's account balance is more than their credit limit, any invoices and orders that are entered for the customer are automatically put on hold. You can take them off hold as required, even if the customer's account is still over the credit limit.

You can allow certain users to override this. This is set in the Invoice and Order User Permissions. Once set, the user will see a warning when entering the order or invoice, and they can choose to continue to save it without it being put on hold.

Using the default VAT rate for sales invoices

When you add a stock item to a sales or order or invoice in Sage 200, the VAT rate used is the one that is set on the stock item. This is to make sure that the correct VAT rate is applied for the item that you're selling.

However there may be occasions where your customer uses a different VAT rate, for example, if they are a charity and don't pay VAT. In this case, you generally need to use the VAT rate set on the customer account. To do this:

• Select Use VAT code as invoice and Order default on the customer account. This makes sure that the VAT rate (Default VAT code) on the customer account overrides the VAT rate set on the stock item.

For foreign currency customer accounts, this is automatically selected when the customer's Country Code is set to anything other than GB.

Order priority

You only need this if you're using Sales Orders. This sets a ranking for your customers when manually allocating stock to outstanding orders.

The order priority code is used to display orders in order of priority, so you can see which are the most urgent. A is the highest priority and Z is the lowest.

Setting the default nominal account

This is the default sales nominal account that you want to post transactions to. This helps to make sure that transactions are posted to the correct nominal account for this customer.

If this is selected here, this account nominal account will already be entered in the Nominal Analysis section, when entering transactions.

This account is usually a sales account on your Profit and Loss report. If you don't select a different one the default sales account is used. This is set on the Default Nominal Accounts screen.

Settlement discounts

This is where you enter the settlement discount details for this customer. The percentage and the number of days is taken from your customer defaults. You can change or keep these.

These discount details set here are then automatically applied when you create an invoice for this customer. This helps to reduce errors when entering transactions.

If you don't want to set default settlement discount details, leave these options blank.

Payment and credit terms

You can record the payment and credit terms that you have agreed with your customer. You can record the length of time that this customer can have goods on credit before payment of an invoice is due on the account. If you use a credit bureau or agency to check references before you offer credit, you can also record this on the account.

Recording payment terms

You record the payment terms that you have agreed with your customer on their account. If you have the same payment terms for the majority of customers, you can set this as the default in the Customer Defaults on the settings. To confirm that you have agreed these terms with your customer, you can select Terms agreed on the Credit tab.

You enter the number of days credit that each customer is allowed and when this credit period starts from. You can choose from the following:

Due date calculations are only made for invoice transactions. Credit notes always retain the same due date as the entered transaction date.

To confirm that you have agreed these terms with your customer, you can select Terms agreed on the Credit tab.

Recording credit risk

If you regularly use a credit agency to check a customer's credit risk, you can store a link to the credit checking page of the bureau's website and then use this to check the credit status of individual customers. To do this:

1. Enter the credit agencies details and link to their website in the Credit Information section of Sales settings.
2. Enter the credit review details on the Credit tab of the customer account.
3. Enter the credit control agency's reference in the Credit reference box and click on the button. This opens the credit agency's website.

Prices and discounts

Invoice and line discounts

This sets the default discounts that this customer will receive by default, on all invoices and sales orders.

• Invoice discount

  This is deducted from the net value of the whole invoice or sales order.

  If you want this customer to get the same discount on all sales orders and invoices, enter a default percentage on their account. The discount percentage will automatically be entered each time an invoice or order is entered for the customer.

  The order discount is set on the Delivery and Invoicing tab of the sales order or invoice.

  

• Line discount

  This is deducted from the net value of an item line (stock or free text).

  If you want this customer to get the same discount on each line of sales orders and invoices, then set a default on their account. This discount is then automatically entered on every stock and freer text line on an order or invoice.

  If you're only going to add a line discount occasionally, then leave this blank and enter the discount as required. Remember, line discounts can only be changed by users who have the correct permissions.

  

Stock item discounts

You can also set the discounts on the selling prices of your stock items and the choose which customers receive these discounts.

The Pricing tab shows you which Order Value discount this customer receives. In you're using Customer Discounts Groups this is also shown here.

You can see the stock item discounts this customer receives on the Customer Discounts workspace.

Selling prices

The price that a customer is charged for each stock item is set up in your Price bands. Each price band is essentially a price list. You can set up as many price bands as you need, you just need to decide which customers receive which prices. Once set up, this determines the price that's used when a stock item is added to an invoice or sales order.

You can see and change the price bands this customer belongs to on the Pricing tab. Every customer must belong to one Universal price band, as these contain the prices for all stock items.

There are three kinds of price band:

• Standard- All customers belong to the standard price band by default.
• Universal -These contain prices for all stock items and are always in use.
• Limited - These contain the prices for selected stock items. You can set start and end dates and times on limited price bands so they can be used for promotions and sales. A customer can use several limited price bands and you can add these here. The price set in a limited price band takes precedence over the price in a universal price band even it's higher.

How discounts are applied

Discounts are applied the following order:

1. Manually entered discounts, where you've overridden the default. This is applied even when the manual discount is less than the other discounts.

2. The best discount between the product discount, group or item discount, and line discount.

3. the best discount between the order value and order or invoice discount. These are applied in addition to line discounts

See Applying prices and discounts to orders.

Document layouts

You can use different invoice and credit note layouts for different customers, or set up a layout for printed documents and another for sending documents by email.

This is where you can set up the list of the layouts you want to use for individual customer accounts. These are then used automatically when printing documents for those customers.

You can override the default selections when you print the documents.

Attachments

Use this to include files and documents about the customer to their record in Sage 200. You can store the file with the record, or include links to files that are kept on a local or network drive.

• If the attachment is a file, a copy of the file is stored with the account/record on the server.

• If the attachment is a link or a folder, only the location of the file or folder is stored; e.g. it might be a file or folder on your network.

Note: The filename can't have more than 150 characters. If it does, the name will be truncated when saved. If the file extension is more than 150 characters, the file can't be saved.

Alerts

You can set up alerts on a customer account, to show messages whenever you deal with that customer. For example, if a customer has specific requirements, you can set up a reminder message that will be displayed whenever you enter an order for that customer.

When you set up an alert on the customer account, you can choose to show the alert for particular activities.

You can choose to show alerts when entering invoices or credit notes, sales orders and returns, quotations and pro forma invoices, and for customer price enquiries.

Customer alerts are displayed for these activities in both the Sage 200 desktop and Web Portal (where available).

Alerts are specific to an individual customer, and you can have multiple alerts for each customer.

See Customer alerts.

Invoice Payments

If you use GoCardless for Invoice Payments, you will also need to upload your customer accounts before you send invoices to your customers.

To upload a customer to Invoice Payments, move to the Payment tab, and select Synchronise customer with Invoice Payments.

You do not need to upload customers if you only use Stripe or PayPal.

Note: If a customer was not uploaded at the time that you print an invoice, the Direct Debit payment option for GoCardless will not be available for that particular invoice. Once you upload the customer to GoCardless, all subsequent invoices for that customer will include the option to pay by Direct Debit.

See Upload customers to Invoice Payments (GoCardless).

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Fix it

How can I change the customer's currency

You can only change the customer's currency if transactions haven't been entered for the account.

If the customer has been trading in one currency and then changes to another, they join the Euro for example, you must create a new account.

See When customers or suppliers change currency.