V9 - 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 to the other. 

Customers list

The customer records of clients who purchase goods and services from you are housed in the Customers list (Operations > 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 Show 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 (add_circle) menu. On the Task Bar, go to Quick add > Customer.
• The Customers list. Go to Operations > Sales > Customers, then select +Add.
• The inline method. Create a new customer while adding a transaction. 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.

Refer to Customer field descriptions for explanations of data fields. The new customer will be added to the Customers list.

An existing customer record can be opened for editing by selecting the customer name (in blue) 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. 
  • 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 > Sales > Customers) and locate the parent customer's record. 
  • From the parent customer record, select Create sub-customer from the Actions dropdown.
    • 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 addresses.
 

1. Locate your customer on the Customers list (Operations > Sales > Customers).
    
2. Select Addresses from the Actions dropdown arrow of the customer record. An Addresses page will open that includes the customer's billing and shipping address from the customer definition. They are listed on the Addresses page as the customer's Default billing and Default shipping addresses.
    
3. To add another address, select Add line in the bottom left corner of the page. A new address section appears on the page, as shown in the screenshot below:
   
   
    
   1. In the Type dropdown, select Billing, Shipping, or Other. If you select Billing or Shipping, the address you enter will be included in the associated dropdown list on sales transactions. Other will not be added to the dropdown. It is just used as a reference. Address fields are Line 1 through Line 5, City, State/Province, Postal code, and Country.
   2. The most important thing to know about the Name field: what you enter as the name is what will appear in the dropdown on sales transactions. So make sure to enter a name that makes the address easy to identify. For example, you might want a name that gives that location's city, state or province, and perhaps a store number (such as Richmond VA #2766). 
   3. Complete the additional fields needed for that address entry: Company, Contact, Phone, and Email.
       
4. Another use of the additional addresses is that you may have two contacts at the same location. On the Addresses page, you can have the same address entered multiple times, with just a change in contact information.
    
5. If you need to enter another address for that customer, repeat Steps 3 and 4. When finished, Save and Close.

You can re-open the Addresses page and edit the addresses listed as needed. The exceptions are the Company, Contact, Phone, and Email data for the default billing and shipping addresses. These fields must be edited in the customer definition. Make sure to save your changes.

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.