Manage customers
Companies sell to customers and customers are the source of your income. You need to register each customer by creating customer cards. Similar to accessing items, you can access customer cards from the customer list, which can also be displayed in three ways:
as a list
as tiles
as tall tiles
On the General FastTab of the customer card, you can enter information such as the name, the credit limit, and the salesperson. On this tab, you can access the balances and total sales, and by selecting Show more, you can also look up the profit that you made on a customer. Additional fields on the General FastTab are IC Partner Code for intercompany usage, Responsibility Center, and Document Sending Profile, which specifies the preferred method of sending documents to a customer. Specifying the preferred sending method means that you don't have to select a sending option every time that you post and send a document to the customer.
The Address & Contact FastTab displays information on the company's address and main contact, in addition to the language that is used for the company. On a customer card, you can use the Show on Map field to open Bing Maps and find the address.
The Invoicing FastTab provides information that is related to the invoicing process such as posting groups, VAT, or tax. If you want to use a currency other than the local currency with a customer, you can enter the specific currency in the Currency Code field. Additionally, on customer cards, you can enter price and discount information and how many invoice copies should be printed for a customer. In the Name field on the customer card, you can also choose a different customer who will be invoiced for products that you sell.
On the Payments FastTab, you can assign a payment term, payment method, and a preferred bank account to customers. The Application Method field has two options (Manual or Apply to Oldest) that you can use when applying customer ledger entries. In the Prepayment % field, you can enter a percentage to create prepayment invoices. On the customer card, you can assign a reminder term and finance charge term.
On the Shipping FastTab, you can use the Location Code field to specify from which location that sales will be processed by default. Additional fields exist that are related to shipping, such as a field that provides all details on the shipment process and a field where you can indicate whether items should be Reserved for a customer or not.
The customer card contains an additional FastTab. The Statistics FastTab shows all sales statistics for a customer.
Customer shipping options
If customers have specific shipping preferences, you can configure the following fields:
Location Code - Specifies the location, such as a warehouse, where you can ship items to the customer.
Shipping method code - Specifies which shipment method to use when you ship items to the customer.
Shipping agents - Specifies the shipping agent that you can use to ship items to the customer.
Shipping agent services - Specifies the agent's services. In this field, you can also assign a shipping time to each service.
Shipping time - Specifies how long it takes from when the items are shipped from the warehouse to when they are delivered.
All these options are set in the Shipping FastTab of the customer card.
If your customer has multiple ship-to addresses, you can add a specific default ship-to address by using the Ship-to Code field. You can create as many ship-to addresses as your client maintains.
Customer ship-to addresses
Customers frequently have alternative shipping addresses in addition to their main business address. For example, a subcontractor might require deliveries to several construction sites, or a manufacturing company might have different warehouse and production locations.
To create alternate shipping addresses, select the Ship-to Addresses action from the Navigate tab on the customer card. Select New, and then you can create a new ship-to address.
If you configure a default address by using the Ship-to Code field on a customer card, Business Central will use this address as a default on sales documents. You can always change the address manually.
Merge customers
If your organization detects duplicate customer records, you can use the Merge Duplicate page to manage those duplicates. The page gives you an overview of duplicated field values and provides functions to select which values to keep or discard when you are merging two records into one.
When you run the Merge Duplicate page, it shows all fields where the values are different for the two records that are being compared.
To merge customers, follow this procedure:
Open the customer card for the customer that you want to keep and then select the Merge with action on the action bar.
On the Merge Duplicate page, in the Merge with field, select the customer that you have determined is a duplicate of the one that you have opened (indicated in the Current field).
The Fields FastTab lists fields where the values are different for the two customers. If the selected customer is truly a duplicate, then only a few fields should be listed, such as typing errors and other data entry mistakes.
Use the Related Tables FastTab to locate duplicated fields in tables that are related to the customer and to count how many duplicates exist in related tables. This FastTab lists tables with related fields to both customers. The Current Count and Duplicate Count fields show the number of fields in related tables where the No. value of the current and the duplicate customer is used. The Merge Duplicate page is informational only; however, if merge conflicts exist, you will resolve them on the Merge Duplicate Conflicts page.
For each field where you want to use another value than the current one, select the Override option. The value in the Alternate Value field will then be transferred to the current record when you complete the process. When you have finished selecting which values to keep or override, select the Merge action.
If no conflicts are found, select Yes in the confirmation message box. If conflicts exist, select the Resolve (xx) conflicts before merge action on the Conflicts FastTab, which will appear if conflicts exist.
If the Conflicts FastTab disappears during the resolving conflicts process or while you are on the Merge Duplicate page, select the Merge action again and then select Yes in the confirmation message box.
Remember that only users with the merge duplicates permission set can use this functionality.
Create a new customer
Watch the following video for a demonstration of how to create a new customer.