V8 - Customer management and the Customers list

Customers in SOS Inventory will synchronize with customers from QuickBooks Online. Changes made to your customer list in one program will synchronize with the other. 

Customers list

The customers who purchase goods and services from you are contained in the Customers list (Operations menu > Sales > Customers). 

If the customer has multiple places of operation, the Action menu's Addresses feature allows you to enter each site's address and contact information. The View customer history action allows you to see all the transactions that involved this customer. And if this customer is a parent company with subsidiaries, the Create sub-customer action allows you to create customer records for the associated companies.

For a general overview of how lists work in SOS Inventory, refer to List functions. See Action and batch action descriptions for more information about the actions available on lists.

Adding and editing customers

New customers can be added to SOS Inventory using any of the following methods:

• The Quick add menu. On the Task bar, go to Quick add > Customer.
• The Customers list. Go to Operations menu > Sales > Customers, then select Add new.
• The inline method. Create a new customer while entering an estimate, sales order, invoice, sales receipt, rental, shipment, or drop-ship purchase order. In the Customer field, simply type the name of your customer and then select Add new customer. Enter the data needed for the customer definition, then save. The new customer will be added to the Customers list.

See Customer field descriptions for an explanation of each field on a customer Edit page.

An existing customer record can be opened for editing by selecting the Edit action for that record on the Customers list. Be sure to save your changes.

Sub-customers vs addresses: Handling customers with multiple shipping or billing locations

If you have a customer with multiple locations, SOS Inventory offers two different ways of handling the locations:

• They can be set up in SOS Inventory as sub-customers (individual customers linked to the parent customer).
• They can be considered multiple addresses of a single customer.

The feature you choose depends on how your company interacts with a specific customer. The sub-customer option is typically used if you are working with Projects in QuickBooks Online or if you are used to working with sub-customers. Sub-customers sync with QuickBooks Online.

Adding sub-customers

A new sub-customer can be created using either of the following methods:

• Add a new customer using any of the methods described in Adding and editing customers. But in the Parent customer field on the customer edit page, select the appropriate customer from the dropdown. If invoices for the sub-customer will be sent to the parent customer, check the Bill with parent box as well.

• Use the parent customer to create the sub-customer. Go to the Customers list (Operations menu > Sales > Customers), locate the parent customer's record, then select Create sub-customer from the Actions Menu. SOS will automatically import into the sub-customer definition some information from the parent customer. In the sub-customer’s Name field, SOS will insert a name using the format [parent name]-sub. Imported fields can be edited as needed. Be sure to check the Bill with parent box if you want invoices for the sub-customer to be sent to the parent.

To view the parents of sub-customers, enable Parent under the Columns feature of the Customers list.

Using the Addresses action

As an alternate method to handling multiple shipping or billing locations, you can set up a single customer to have multiple locations. Locate your customer on the Customers list (Operations Menu > Sales > Customers) and select Addresses from the Actions menu of the customer record. Enter or edit the address information for all the locations, then Save and close.

Using customer types

SOS Inventory allows you to distinguish between your different customers—such as wholesale, retail, online, etc.—through the Customer type feature. Refer to Adding and using customer types for additional information.