Customer enquiry

Find this screen

Open: Customers > Customer Enquiries > Customer Enquiry.

How to

Use the customer enquiry

This shows you information about the selected customer account across several tabs. Use this to see information about a customer at a glance.

Use the Transaction Enquiry and View Orders option to see details of the transactions and sales order for this customer.

Company	The customer's name and address details. The current balance on the customer account. The customer credit limit.
Contacts	View all the contacts for this customer account. You can view contact details for each person, check their job roles, or message them using Skype.
General	Your customer's VAT details, the default nominal account .
Stationery	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 if you're using sales orders.
Terms	The settlement discount details, and payment terms.
Credit	The credit reference information about the customer. If you use a credit control agency, set the agency's reference here.
Analysis codes	The Analysis code values used for this customer.
Aged balances	The age of your customer's debt displayed in three different ways, by transaction date, by due date and by calendar month. The outstanding balance on the account is shown based on the option that you choose.
Turnover	This shows the sales for this customer by period. The amounts shown are net values and do not include VAT. Transactions are always included in the turnover figures in the period that the transaction is dated.
Turnover by year	This shows the sales for this customer by year and transaction type. The amounts shown are net values and do not include VAT. Transactions are always included in the turnover figures in the year that the transaction is dated.
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. You can add new memos here. An * (asterisk) is displayed on the Memo tab if there are active memos.
Pricing	The pricing and discount details for this customer.
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. An * (asterisk) is displayed on the Alerts tab if there are active alerts.

Add memos

Use this to add comments about the customer .

You can mark these memos as Active, so you can see which are still being used. Setting a memo as Inactive allows you to keep a record of previous memos.

To add or edit a memo:

Select the Memo tab.
Click Add or Edit.
Enter the Memo Text.
Click OK.

The Add Memo window closes, your new memo is marked as Active and displays at the bottom of the list.

You can mark these memos as Active, so you can see which are still being used. Setting a memo as Inactive allows you to keep a record of previous memos.

View turnover figures

This shows the sales for this customer by period. The amounts shown are net values and do not include VAT.

Transactions are always included in the turnover figures in the period that the transaction is dated.

On the Turnover tab, you can display any or all periods for your previous years and up to five future years.

Use the From and To date boxes to change the date range.

View aged balances

You can choose how to show your aged balances for each of your ageing periods.

Select the relevant option: Transaction date, Due date, Calendar months.
The balance for each period is updated. If you choose Calendar months, the periods change to 1 month, 2 months etc, depending the on the number of ageing periods you have set.

For example, you have a 3 ageing periods of 30, 60 and 90 days. You have entered a transaction dated 30th March with a due date of 30th April. Today's date is 30th May. This transaction will show in the following periods:

By transaction date in 60 days.
By due date in 30 days.
By calendar month in 2 months.

Useful info

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.

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.

Using 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.

This account is usually a sales account on your Profit and Loss report.

Settlement discounts

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

See an example

You offer a settlement discount of 5%:

You record the details of an invoice for £100. VAT is calculated at £20. You enter the discount percentage and amount which is £5.
You receive payment for the invoice within the specified period and the customer has taken the discount, so they pay you £114. This is the gross amount (£120) minus the net discount (£5) and the discounted VAT (5% x 20 = £1).
You record the receipt and enter the cheque value as £114 and add the discount value as £5. This creates a transaction value of £119.
You allocate the invoice (£120) to the receipt (£119). The VAT discount of £1 is still outstanding
You create a credit note for the VAT discount of £1.
You allocate this to the remaining balance on the invoice.

Transaction	Nominal Account	Debit	Credit
Invoice	Debtors Control	120
	Net		100
	VAT		20
Receipt	Discounts Allowed	5
	Bank Account	114
	Debtors Control		119
Credit Note	Debtors Control		1
	VAT	1

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:

Enter the credit agencies details and link to their website in the Credit Information section of Sales settings.
Enter the credit review details on the Credit tab of the customer account.
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. If you're usingCustomer 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.

Attachments

Shows files and documents about the customer. 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.

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.

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