How You Use Customer Profile Classes

Use profile classes to organize your customer accounts into categories that reflect the needs of your enterprise.

The profile class record contains generic options that you can set in different ways to group your customers into broad categories, such as by industry, location, size, creditworthiness, business volume, or payment cycles.

For example, you might define three profile classes that reflect customer payment behavior: one for customers who pay promptly; one for late paying customers with high late charge rates; and a third for customers who for the most part pay on time, with discount incentives for early payment.

Profile Class Management

When you create a customer account, Receivables assigns the profile class DEFAULT. Use the Edit Account page to modify this profile class or assign another profile class to the customer account.

When you create a customer site, Receivables doesn't assign either the DEFAULT profile class or the profile class of the customer account. Instead you must use the Create Site Profile page to assign the first profile class to the site. Use the Edit Site page either to update the existing profile or to assign a new profile class to the site.

After you assign a profile class to a customer account or site, you can modify details of the profile class to meet specific requirements for that account or site. For example, a particular site may transact business in a separate currency, or the site may be subject to additional late charges or penalty charges. These updates apply only to that particular account or site and don't affect the profile class record itself.

Profile class updates and assignments are managed using effective date ranges. Each profile class that you assign or update supersedes the previous profile class for the given date range. In this way you can manage over time the changes that take place in customer behavior or customer requirements. The date of a given transaction or receipt determines which account or site profile applies to the activity. The profile history for an account or site provides details of when a given version of a profile class is active.