Setting up customer accounts

The sales process contains interactions between your customer accounts, invoices and payments. There are default values and configuration options that can be set to help make the entry of new customer accounts, invoices or payments quick and consistent.

Some of these will have been set during the initial set up of Sage 200 but a quick review will ensure that the most appropriate defaults are being used.

Decisions to make about your customer accounts

1. Do you offer a settlement discount to the majority of your customers?

   If you offer your customers similar settlement discounts, setting a default can save you time when creating new customer accounts. It also ensures that the right discount details are entered on transactions. The default you set will automatically appear on your accounts, but you can change them on the customer accounts as you set them up.

2. Which VAT rate do you need to use for the majority of your customers.

   Setting a default VAT rate, can save time ad reduce errors when creating customer accounts.

   If most of your transactions are going to use standard VAT, you can keep the standard VAT rate as the default.

   If the majority of your customers are going to use a different VAT rate, for example if they're all in the EU, you can select an alternative default VAT rate.

3. Do you agree terms with your customers? Do you want a reminder when terms haven't been agreed?

   You can choose to set terms are shown as agreed by default.

   If you want to be reminded, don't set this as the default. You'll then have indicate when terms are agreed for each account.

4. Do you offer the majority of your customers the same payment terms?

   If you have agreed the same payment terms with most of your customers, entering a default can save you time creating accounts.

   When you need to, you can change the payment terms on individual customer accounts and the Due date on individual invoices.

5. What ageing periods do you want to use when reporting on your aged debts?

   Ageing periods are used to show how old your outstanding transactions are.

   Generally, debts are aged over 3 periods, which are typically 30, 60 and 90 days, so this is already set up for you. However, you can have from 3 to 8 periods of any length (in days). The last period shows any debts for that period or older.

6. Is the waiting period for bad debts, set by HMRC still 6 months?

   This determines when you can reclaim VAT on bad debts for HMRC. You only need to change it, if HMRC changes this waiting period.

7. Do you want to use Analysis Codes to improve your reporting and compare accounts?

   Analysis codes are additional pieces of information that you can associate with your accounts and then use to filter and report on your accounts.

What do you want to do?

Review or change your customer settings and defaults.

Set up analysis codes

Create customer accounts