Customers

Links are provided to forms for the following settings and configurations. They are located in Administration > Global Settings under Customers. The following lists them in the order in which they display on the Global Settings window. The following lists them in the order in which they display on the Global Settings window.

• Contacts

• Customer Locations

• Customers

• Prospects

Contacts

A Contacts link becomes available for a customer when you save the Customer form. You may also create a Contact using the Contact link. However, you must associate it with an existing Customer. Contacts may be anyone your company wishes to track. See Customers.

One special type of contact is the Billing contact. Contacts designated as a billing contact are available for association on the project form. You also use them in the invoice process by including contact information in the invoice address section. If the billing contact has an email address, you may also choose to email invoices to the designated billing contact after the invoice has been approved. See Customer Billing Information.

Enter the first and last name in the contact form as well as the associated customer record. All other fields are optional. If you have entered customer address information, you may optionally copy the customer address to the contact by checking the Copy customer address box or override the address by typing in the address fields. Although the email address field is an optional field, it is useful to enter since other features allow communication to contacts with email addresses. You can send email messages to contacts specified in reports or an invoice generated for the customer.

Customer Locations

Create and store customer location attributes at the customer entity level. You can then use these attributes for reporting. Sample customer locations could be by state, by city, by country or any customized list of values.

To create Customer Locations:

1. Go to Administration > Global Settings > Customer location.

2. Select New Customer location from Create Button.

3. Enter the location Name along with any Notes, if desired.

4. Click Save.

Customers

Your company may use the term customer or customer. Depending on your company's terminology preferences, different titles may display on these forms. In this manual, we are using customer.

We define customers as those who drive business within your company. You can keep customer information basic or cover all information about the customer, depending on what other systems you may be using to track customer information.

To create Customers:

1. Go to Administration > Global Settings > Customers > Customers.

2. Select New Customer from the Create Button.

   The New customer form displays.

3. After you save it, the information displays on the Edit demographic information form. To access it, click the Demographic link.

Note:

The Customer form asks for two basic pieces of information: Company Name and Nickname. Each is explained as follows.

Company Name — is the official corporate name of the customer and is used on reporting and invoices.

Nickname — is a shortened version of the company name that is used throughout the OpenAir UI to save space on page views. The nickname does not appear on invoices. However, it does appear on formatted application reports such as Timesheets and Expense reports.

You may optionally enter customer address information in the Customer form along with a designated customer location and customer owner. If you enter a customer owner, this resource becomes available for inclusion in the review or approval of items related to the customer project such as timesheets and invoices. Basic customer tracking information for sales such as territory, customer source, business type, and so forth are provided for optional entry if the Opportunities application is enabled in your account. See Opportunities.

Note:

You should always set up a customer account for your own company. You can use it for the internal tracking of projects.

Customer Billing Information

A Billing information link becomes available for a customer after you save the Customer form. Billing information includes Currency, Payment terms, Invoice prefix, Billing code, and a standard invoice approver, which may be left blank if control is desired within the project.

A default set of Payment terms is supplied as standard. However, you may create customized payment terms. See Payment Terms.

The Invoice prefix lets you define a prefix for the customer, which will allow sequential numbering based on the value of the prefix. This provides customer level or ownership level invoice numbering. For example, if a set of customers is uniquely owned by an office or country, you can set an invoice prefix on all of these owned Customers to ensure the invoice numbering is sequential for the country or office. You may also choose an Invoice layout to use with this customer, as well as a specific Billing code if you use Billing codes in your company.

If you are sending invoices to customers by email using OpenAir, your customers can view their statements or account status in OpenAir, provided you have checked the Customer can view statements box on the Edit billing information form. Your company's employees can view statements using Reports > Advanced > Customer statements.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

When would I use billing information at the customer level?

You generally use billing information at the customer level for one or more of the following reasons:

• You would like a specific person to approve all the customer's invoices.

• There is a specified hourly rate you want to use for this customer's billing and you are not using multiple rates by role, job code or service.

• There are particular payment terms for this customer.

• You want to designate a special invoice prefix on all invoices for this customer.

• You want to use a certain invoice layout for this customer.

• There are particular notes you want to display on the invoice or email text.

How do the settings on the customer billing information form work with project level settings?

If you leave items blank on the project form, the customer billing definitions are used. If invoice text or notes are added at the project level, the customer information and project information are added together on the invoice. The invoice approver is included in the invoice routing regardless of the project level settings.

Prospects

Prospects are potential customers against which deals are being proposed. Prospects are only used in the Opportunities application and may be converted to customers at a later stage. The information captured for prospects is similar to that of customers without the information regarding billing. The link does not display for prospects.

To create Prospects:

1. Go to Administration > Global Settings > Customers > Prospects.

2. Select New Prospect from the Create Button.