Chapter 1Customer Management

Visual EstiTrack ™ - Chapter 1 Job Estimating – Customer Management

Chapter 1Customer Management

Chapter 1 Customer Management 1

Customers 2

Customer Maintenance 3

Adding a Customer 5

Retrieving an Existing Customer 8

Deleting a Customer 9

Address Tab 10

General Tab 19

Contact Tab 26

CRM Tab – Customer Relationship Management 41

Notes Tab 54

Bar Code/ EDI Tab 58

Sales Tab 61

Transactions Tab 64

Quotes Tab 66

Orders Tab 67

Internet 69

Customer Monitoring 71

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 73

Customer Types 75

Customer Reports 79

Customer Report 80

Customer Mail Labels 84

Customer Contact Mail Labels 89

Customer Efficiency Reports 93

Customers

Visual EstiTrack’s Customers Section provides tools that allow you to maintain, monitor, manage, and report all your customer activities.

Figure 1.1 Visual EstiTrack’s Main Menu

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Customer Maintenance

Visual EstiTrack’s Customer Maintenance section provides a fully integrated customer information system that serves as a default database link to customer specific data with all related modules: i.e. Quotes, Orders, Shipping and Invoices.

The Customer section also serves as a reference section that summarizes important related information and provides a user friendly front office solution that can improve contact management, sales and customer services. After setting up the Customer Maintenance database, users can efficiently perform tasks as simple as printing mailing labels or as complex as advanced contact management and customer account monitoring.

Menu Selection

·  Left click on the “Customers” in the menu heading

·  Select “Customer Maintenance” from the drop down list.

Shortcut: Quickly enter this module by clicking on the displayed “Customer Maintenance” icon on the toolbar.

Overview

The Customer Maintenance screen is used to capture and maintain customer information. In addition to the customer code and type, the screen is delineated by a number of tabulations. Each of these tabulations takes the user to various aspects of customer maintenance including adding, deleting and modifying customer information.

·  Address / Account information including address, phone/fax numbers , multiple ship-to addresses, Sales, Sales Tax and EDI
·  General / Account information such as sales rep, commission structure, web site URL, payment terms, sales tax status and ID’s, credit limits and shipping instructions.
·  Contacts / Lists and details all key company personnel (contacts) – including primary contact management.
·  CRM / Customer Relationship Module is used to track issue resolution.
·  Notes / Offers a free form text area for any relevant account information plus “alerts” feature where pop-up messages can be entered for users accessing specific program functions.
·  Bar Code/EDI / Bar Code data management.
·  Sales / Up to date sales statistics: Push buttons for instant graph creation.
·  Transactions / Allows monitoring of important customer account information to provide up to the minute listings of all invoices, credits and payments.
·  Quotes / Lists all customer quotations including status, follow up dates and entries.
·  Orders / Displays due dates, status and details for both sales and shop orders.

Many of these tabs provide the capability to “drill down” by double-clicking on line items for immediate access to other sections of the program such as primary invoice, quote or order. Also, a variety of Customer and Sales oriented listings and reports can be generated on the fly and can be either printed or viewed instantly on your screen. The user selects what information is displayed using various criteria.

Security

The system administrator controls access to this menu item via User access Rights (see User Table). Careful consideration should be given regarding who is authorized to manage this menu option.

Note: Customers with activity such as invoices or credit memo should not be deleted.
Helpful Hint: Tab can be used to move between most fields to eliminate use of the mouse.

Adding a Customer

Customers can be added to the system either by manually entering a new record or by editing a copy of an existing record. Both methods are outlined below.

Sect. 1 Æ /
Figure 1.2 Customer Maintenance
Sect. 2 Æ
Sect. 3 Æ

Manual Customer Record Entry

·  Activate the pushbutton ADD (Sect. 3 of figure 1.2). The Customer Maintenance screen will now prepare for a new entry. All the fields will be blank and ready for entry by the user.

·  Customer Code – required (Sect. 1 of figure 1.2) – The customer code is a unique identifier for each customer. Any alphanumerical combinations are allowed without excess of six characters. Some use an alphabetical abbreviation of the customer’s name or the first letter of the customer’s name followed by a number, e.g. H00001.
If an abbreviation of the customer’s name is used, reports will be generated in alphabetical order. If numerical or alphanumerical codes are assigned, reports will be generated sequentially according the first character of the customer code.

·  Type (Sect. 1 of figure 1.2) – This field is used to identify a type of customer, e.g.: A for Automotive, P for Plumbing.
The field is not required but can be used for printing criteria. For example, if the automotive customers need to be contacted, option to print mailing labels for all type “A” within the print criteria screen. This is an open field and not tied to any tables.

·  Name – required (Sect. 1 of figure 1.2) – The customer company name as it is to be printed and displayed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices.

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Copying an Existing Record

The second approach to adding a customer record is to copy an existing record from the system. This can be done in the following manner:

·  Retrieve the customer information to be copied from into the screen. This can be done using the directions discussed in the proceeding section “Retrieving a Customer” found below.

·  Once the desired customer data is displayed, the COPY pushbutton found on the bottom of the screen (Section 3 of figure 1.2), can be activated to initiate the screen below:

·  Enter the new customer code name (max 6 characters) and activate COPY.

Figure 1.3 Customer Copy

A new record called TESTA1 is now displayed in the Customer Maintenance field. All fields will be populated with a copy of the original customer code A1 data. The fields can be now updated with any required changes and saved to the system via the pushbutton SAVE found on the bottom of the screen (figure 1.2 section 3).

Retrieving an Existing Customer

·  The pushbutton displayed in section 3 of figure 1.2 can be used to recall previously entered customers. The following form will be displayed when activated:

Figure 1.4 Search Criteria

·  The fields displayed above can be used to filter the customer records. Partial words/ numbers can also be used when searching for the customer. Search results will be displayed on the bottom half of the screen.

·  The results are automatically ordered by the “Company Name” field. The user can change the order of the search results by using the “Order Search Results By” dropdown menu located on the bottom of the form.

·  Once a company is selected, double click on the entry to retrieve the customer information back into the Customer Maintenance screen (figure 1.2)

Deleting a Customer

·  To remove a customer record from the system, retrieve the customer information into the Customer Maintenance screen. Once the data is displayed, the DELETE Pushbutton displayed on the button of the screen (Section 3 of Form 1.2) can be used to permanently remove the record from the system.

Address Tab

The address tab is used to capture all aspects of the customer’s mailing address, ship to address, sales and sales tax information as well as setting up the EDI transfers. The address tab screen has two primary sections: Mailing Address and Ship-To Address. Both sections are outlined in detail below.

Sect. 1 Æ / Figure 1.5 Address Tab
Sect. 2 Æ

Mailing Address

The customer’s address, phone numbers and primary contacts are managed in this area. The address entered here will be displayed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices. Two lines are available for the address. Once the information is entered, SAVE will secure it to the system.

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Ship-to Address

The Ship-to Address maintains all relevant shipping information pertained to each separate ship to address. This valuable screen is a broken down into three sections: Ship to, Sales and Sales tax. Each section is separately outlined below.

Adding a Ship-to Address

·  To add a new ship-to address, click on the Address Tab’s Add pushbutton and add as many ship-to addresses as needed, clicking Save after each entry. You can also edit existing “Ship-To Addresses” by double clicking on the line where ship-to is displayed. The screen shown below will appear when adding a new Ship-To Address.

Sect. 1 Æ /
Figure 1.6 Shipping Address
Sect. 2 Æ
Sect. 3 Æ

Address à Ship-To Addresses à Ship-To:

The Ship-To section (Section 1 of Figure 1.6) captures a variety of shipping specifications. As well as maintaining the actual address, the user can also setup whether or not the customer ship-to will use EDI, box/pallet specifications, and packing slip defaults.

Below is a description of each field included in the Ship-to Address screen. The user can choose which fields need to be populated for each specific ship to address. The description is as follows:

Ship-To Field / Required / Field Type
Length / Description /
Abbreviated Name / NO / ALPHANUM(10) / Abbreviated name of the Ship-to Address.
Default to Mailing Address / N/A / PUSHBUTTON / When activated, information in the Ship-to fields will be replaced with mailing address information as defined in the customer “Mailing Address” setup.
Ship to Name / NO / ALPHANUM(33) / Name of Ship-to Company.
Address / NO / ALPHANUM(33) / The customer’s post office box or street mailing address location. This address will be printed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices. Three lines are available.
City / NO / ALPHANUM(15) / The customer's mailing city, as it is to be printed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices.
State/Province / NO / ALPHANUM(3) / The customer's mailing state or province location as it is to be printed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices.
Zip/Postal Code / NO / ALPHANUM(10) / The customer's mailing zip code or postal code location as it is to be printed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices.
Country / NO / ALPHANUM(25) / The customer's mailing country location as it is to be printed on the Customer Price Quotations and Invoices.
Transit Days / NO / NUMBER(1) / The number of days it takes to ship from your location to the customers Ship-To location.
Recalculated Ship by Dates / N/A / PUSHBUTTON / Recalculated ALL ship by dates in sales order releases related to this ship to address.
Use as Default Ship to Address / N/A / CHECKBOX / If checked, the address defined will be used as default ship to address.
Use as Third Party billing Address on BOL / N/A / If checked, the address will be used as the third party billing address on the BOL
Allow multiple parts on the same skid / N/A / CHECKBOX / Defines whether or not multiple parts are allowed on the same skid.
Ship only Full Boxes / N/A / CHECKBOX / If checked, only full boxes are allowed to be shipped
Create 2D Barcodes on Label / N/A / CHECKBOX / If checked, 2D barcodes will be created on the label
Requires Shipper No. Label for Master Labels / N/A / CHECKBOX / If checked, a shipper number label will be required for master labels.
Max. Pallet Weight / NO / NUMBER(15) / The max. pallet weight allowed for the customer’s defined Ship-to address.
Max. Box Weight / NO / NUMBER(15) / The maximum box weight allowed for the customer’s defined Ship-to address.
EDI Location Qualifier / NO / DROPDOWN / Defined in the EDI Tables
EDI Consignee / NO / CHECKBOX / Activate checkbox to identify that the consignee is setup for EDI.
Qualifier / NO / ALPHANUM(2) / Customer specific
ID Code / NO / ALPHANUM(5) / Customer specific
EDI Location ID (Air) / NO / DROPDOWN / Defined in the EDI tables
EDI GS-ST Segments / NO / PUSHBUTTON / To capture the customer specific functional group header (GS) and transaction set header (ST).
Packing Slip Defaults / N/A / PUSHBUTTON / The Packing List Report Default form is retrieved when activated. The user can select the items to include in the report. This report is displayed in the chapter further below.
Contact / NO / DROPDOWN / The customer contact can be selected from this drop down box. The contact is defined in the contact tab of the customer maintenance screen.

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Address à Ship-To Addresses à Sales

The sales section (Section 2 of figure 1.6) captures the sales representatives used for the customer. This is normally used when tracking commission. The currency used by the ship to location is also captured within this section.

Field / Required / Field Type
Length / Description
Sales Rep. 1 / NO / DROPDOWN / The sales representative used for the ship to customer. If field is blank, the default sales representative defined in the “General” tab will be used on all printed documentation where value is used.
Used when tracking commission.
Sales Rep. 2 / NO / DROPDOWN / This field is used when two customer’s sales representatives are used for a ship-to address. If field is blank, the default sales representative defined in the “General” tab will be used on all printed documentation where value is used.
Used when tracking commission.
Currency / NO / DROPDOWN / Select an appropriate currency for the ship to location from the dropdown menu. This will become the default currency for the ship-to, which can be overwritten at any time. Once a ship-to is selected, the country’s flag icon replaces the search button icon.
If the field is left blank, the default currency defined in the “General” tab will be used on all printed documentation where value is used.

Address à Ship-To Addresses à Sales Taxes