E-Learning Peachtree: How to Maintain Customers/Prospects and Its Information

How to maintain customers/prospects

After making company profile and adding its chart of accounts, time to maintain customer accounts. First you need to open Peachtree accounting software. Then open your existing company in which you want to maintain customer Account. Go to the “Maintain” and select the option “Customers/Prospects” by clicking on it. As shown below in the figure.

A new window will pop up as shown in figure below, which needs to be filled by information relating to the customer. Data of customer can be maintained with different prospects like:

· General

· Sales Default

· Payments Defaults

· Custom Fields

· History

Header:

This is the header which needs to be filled compulsory. You can give Customer ID E.g. 201 or 300, any three digit numbers, it can be more than three digits depends on number of customers you are dealing with.

General:

This tab contains the basic information of the customer. Contact No, Address, City, Country, Customer type, Telephone no, Email ID and Website etc.

If customer has different shipping address like more than one office in the country so here is the option to add more than one shipping address. You can select options for multiple addresses by clicking this button

Sales Default:

1. Sales Rep: If customer is dealing through any sales person then this option will help you to fill out by sales representative name.

2. GL sales Acct: This is general ledger sales account. In order to fill this option you have to select “Sales Account” by clicking on the search button which is next to the filling row and before this you need to verify that Sales account is already exist in “Charts of Accounts”.

3. Open. P.O: This is the purchase order number of the customer.

4. Ship Via: here you can select the shipping medium that would be use as a primary shipment to the relative customer.

Payment Defaults:

If customer is willing for payments through Credit Card, then this tab needs to be filled at least by the info Cardholder’s Name, Credit card Number and Expiration Date.

Custom Fields:

If you have extra information of the customer and the previous tabs don’t have the option to save that info, you can save them here.

1. Second contact

2. Reference

3. Mailing list

4. Multiple sites

Note: “You can change the filling options with a procedure that is not going to describe here right now”

History:

This tab shows the history of transactions that were made in prior periods relating to that specific customer. More on window will show the last invoice date and its amount, last payment etc.

Maintain Customer Information

First click on Maintain then select Default Information a sub menu will open; select Customers by clicking on it as shown in figure below.

A default window will open that contains the tabs of:

· Payment Terms

· Account Aging

· Custom Fields

· Finance Charges

· Pay Methods

Payment Terms:

This is the default view of the “Payment Terms” here you see the “Due in Numbers” is already selected. This shows the options of:

· Net Due in

Defines the total days for which the sales are made on credit.

· Discount In

If the payment of credit sales is made in number of days the discount will be allowed on the payment.

· Discount %

Here you will mention the discounted rate that would be given on the amount.

· Credit Limit

It creates the boundary for the amount that can be nominated as the credit limit.

C.O.D (Cash on Delivery):

If you select the C.O.D you can see the Due on the, Discount in, and Discount % option goes inactive. You can only edit credit Limit.

Here you need to select the “Sales Account” in the “GL Sales Account” by clicking on the search button. After selecting the account it will be the default account of sales that will be shown in the Maintain Customer/Prospects sales default tab.

If you already don’t have the sales account you can double click in the label box. A new window of “Maintain Chats of Accounts” will appear. Here you can easily make a new account of sales by giving the ID, Description and selecting the account type as shown in the figure below.

Account Aging:

Account aging refers to the people of that category who don’t pay their amount that were due. Here we can define the time period by giving the intervals of days as shown below in the figure.

Custom Fields:

Custom fields can be used to store the extra information about the customers. You can edit the labels by giving them the names that were relate to the information to be stored. The enabled box must be checked for text to be entered.

See the last label box in the previous figure it was unable to write. When you enabled the check box as shown in the figure below it will active the “label name box” which can be writable.

Finance Charges:

It defines the finance charges that would made on the amount due to the customer.

Charge Finance Charges:

Here you will mention the point at which finance charges should be applied to overdue invoices. For example, a finance charge will be imposed on the balance due after a 30 days grace period. Finance charges are calculated from the first day the invoice becomes overdue.

On Invoices:

Here you will mention the number of days after which the charges becomes due.

Up to $:

Here you need to enter the amount which would limit the annual interest rate. If the balance below this rate, the rate in the annual interest rate field will apply. On balances over this amount, the second interest rate applies.

Annual Interest Rate:

It is the annual interest rate for balances above the amount. If you want to enter only one rate, enter the same amount in both boxes otherwise it will manipulate the charges.

Minimum Finance Charges:

Here you can mention the minimum finance charge amount that will apply when a customer is late with a payment. If the calculated amount is less than the minimum, the minimum amount will be used.