Customer Settings and Defaults (Configuration Assistant)

Find this screen

Open: Configuration Assistant > Customer Settings and Defaults.

How to

Set default settlement discounts

If you offer your customers similar settlement discounts, entering the details here can save you time when creating new customer accounts. Discount details entered here are added to new supplier accounts by default and then on transactions. You can change these on your customer accounts as you set them up.

Early settlement days - the default number of days to qualify for the discount.

Discount percentage - the default settlement discount percentage.

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

Set default VAT details

This is the default VAT rate to be used on your accounts and then passed to your transactions.

If most of your transactions are going to use standard VAT, leave the standard VAT rate selected in the drop-down box.

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

This helps you to make sure that the correct VAT rate is used when entering transactions.

For example, when you create an account for an EU customer, you can set the correct VAT rate on the account, this in turn makes sure that correct VAT rate is used on all invoices.

Set whether terms are set to be agreed

Select this if you want to agree terms on most of your new accounts. You can still change this on individual accounts if you need to.

Don't select this if you want to individually choose whether your customer accounts have agreed terms.

If the Terms Agreed box isn't selected on a customer account, you'll see a Terms have not been agreed prompt when entering transactions.

Set default payment terms

If you try to agree the same payment terms with most of your customers, entering a default here can save you time when creating accounts.

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

To set your default payment terms:

Choose the Basis of terms. This is when the credit period starts from.
What the choices mean
1. Document date - the number of days after the transaction date.
2. Start of month - the number of days after the first day of the month that the transaction is dated in.
3. End of month - the number of days after the last day of the month that the transaction is dated in.
4. Calendar monthly - the invoice is due on the same day in the following month.
Enter the default Number of days. This is the number of days credit that a customer is allowed before payment of their invoice is due.

Set your ageing periods

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

On the Ageing tab, you choose the number of ageing periods you want to use and the number of days in each period. 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.

To change the ageing periods:

Enter the Number of periods your want to use.
In the Debtors periods start after grid, enter the length (in days) of each ageing period.

Transactions are aged from their transaction date and not their due date.

These ageing periods are used on statements and aged debt reports.

Set your due date periods

Due date periods are used on the Due Date report and for your debtor letters.

The Due Date report shows the total amount owed by a customer, based on the number of days the transactions are past their due date The date by which an invoice should be paid. This is calculated from the Payment Terms set on the customer or supplier account..

Debtor letters are sent to your customers, based on the number of Due date periods you use. You can have a different letter for each due date period. Sage 200 sends the letter that corresponds to the Due date period that the oldest unpaid invoice falls into.

Your due date periods are automatically set to be the same as your ageing periods but you can change them if you want to.

To change the due date periods:

In the Due date periods start after grid, enter the length of each due date period (in days).

Useful info

Setting customer defaults

This is where you can enter default settings for your customer accounts and transactions.

Defaults entered here are passed on to each new customer account. Defaults entered on customer accounts are passed on to transactions.

The following diagram shows how this works.

Why set defaults?

Setting defaults can save you time when you create accounts and also helps to prevent errors.

The default customer settings we configured for you

We have performed some initial configuration of your default customer settings for you.

If you accept our configuration, your new customer accounts will:

not have settlement discount details.
use the standard VAT rate.
have the terms agreed indicator set to 'yes'.
have payment terms set to 30 days from the document date.
have ageing periods of 30, 60 and 90 days.

If this configuration fits your needs you can save them and move onto the next panel. If not, adjust the configuration to best suit your needs.

What happens when

What happens when I save and mark this panel as complete?

When you finish adding information and click Save and Mark as Complete, the panel is marked with a tick to indicate that you have completed this step.
While you remain on the Configuration Assistant, you can return to this panel to add or amend any of the details you have entered.