Revision as of 07:33, 24 November 2014

Most, but not all, organizations will have customer accounts. As a result they will need a module that will manage the information of their clients. The 'Customer Accounts' module will accomplish that goal easily and efficiently. And not only does it allow the user to define names, phone numbers, and addresses, but also the ability to specify authorized contacts that can make adjustments to the account, set discounts that are only applicable on certain accounts, store associated notes, and more!

Tabs

Each module will contain several tabs that help group the various types of associated information. Below we will cover the details of each one currently available in the latest release of the module.

?

This tab is found in each module as the way to access helpful documentation and, when clicked, will load this wiki page for the module. Of course, you can always go directly to our wiki and read through the entire software documentation.

General

Also found in most of the available extensions, this tab provides the general information associated with the module. Below you will find the details of each field available on the form.

• Customer name As the name suggests, this is the name of the customer account. This textbox also doubles as a submission field where you can enter in the (partial) customer name and all matches will be shown in a selectable list which will populate the tab data upon clicking the desired item in the list.

It is important to note that the results list that is returned uses the following values to help the webBooks user know exactly which account to load: Customers name [ID] first line of address. The first value would be the value that gets loaded for the field. The second reflects the customers id (see 'Type & ID' below) - this is NOT their account number! The final portion of the line is the first line of the accounts mailing address. Using those three bits of information, a webBooks user should be able to identify the exact account to load when there may be more than one customer with the same name (e.g. a common persons name or a business chain).

If you are creating a new account instead of loading one, simply select the '_NEW ACCOUNT_' value in the list and continue filling out the available fields on the form then click the 'Save' button in the header. To clear all of this off the screen, simply delete the value in this field.

• (coming soon) These options will become active within the next version or two.

• Commerce URI Unlike ALL other business management software, webBooks enables you to automate as much as possible with those that you conduct business with that also use webBooks. For example, if you have a service provider that also uses webBooks and the two are setup using the 'Commerce URI' and 'Commerce SID', when they invoice you, there is no reason for them to mail, email, or even verbally tell you! Once their invoice is posted, their webBooks will communicate with yours and automatically exchange the necessary information!

It is important to note that the value here should contain the publically accessible URI so that companies outside your own can communicate with your instance of webBooks. Once you have supplied a value here and for the 'Commerce SID' below, you can click the 'Send' button to have the software email the desired receipient both pieces of your commerce information. This step is not necessary, but was included to help two parties pair their software.

• Commerce SID Used in conjunction with the 'Commerce URI', this value is a dynamic, single-use string that ensures communication ONLY with the desired target. Since it is a single-use string, you can setup the initial value to be anything you want. For example, you could set the initial value to 'Hello World' and after the webBooks pairing has taken place, you should NEVER adjust this value again (since it would signal an alert and stop communication between the two webBooks immediately)!

After entering the value for the 'Commerce URI' and the 'Commerce SID', only ONE of the two parties that are pairing with one another should click the 'Pair' button. For more information on pairing, see the 'Common Tasks' section below.

• Contact number There are three of these fields so that a variety of contact information can be stored for the customer account. It should be noted that any of these numbers are considered main lines to the account and not individual numbers for the authorized account contacts (see 'Authorized contacts' below). Each of the values will explained below:

Home: this value represents the landline to a residential customer account.

Site (local): if the account is a business, this would be the landline number associated with their local area code.

Site (toll free): similar to the above value, but reflects the toll free line associated with the account.

Fax: as the name suggests, this is the fax line for the account.

Other: used for any other type of contact information.

• Website Obviously residential customer accounts will most likely not use this value, but for your customers that are some type of organization, this field will store the website associated with the account.

• Tax exempt no Again, this will most likely not apply to residential accounts, but for the customers that resell (some of) the products they purchase from your company, this value will define their tax exempt number to prevent sales tax from being charged on specific purchases.

• Terms & Balance A line that contains two values, the first sets the default sales terms of the account where the second displays the current outstanding balance for the customer. And although the set sales terms can be changed on a per invoice basis, the value here defines the default value that will be used when interacting with the account.

• Status A sub-field of 'Balance' from above, this field defines the status that the customer account current has. It will automatically change values based on the value of the 'Balance' field.

• Current sales rep A list of all the current employees, this field represents the current sales representative for the customer account.

• Username Since webBooks is web-based, chances are your business will want to provide access to some of the information within your database in your website (e.g. customer account access to their prior invoices). This field will enable your customers to log into your organizations website using the value here along with the 'Password' value below.

• Password There are two values on this line that may not be apparent at first glance. The first value is the password that the customer should use the log into your companies website. The second value is the confirmation password. This is used to verify that you entered the value you thought you did for the password value.

• Physical Address This block of fields should correspond to the physical address where the customer account resides.

• Billing Address Some customers will have a separate mailing address where their bills should be sent. For example, you may have a college student who needs to send bills to their parents, or perhaps the customer is a larger business that has a billing department. If both addresses need to be the same, simply click the 'Same as physical' button to copy the information here from above.

• Account number As the name suggests, this is the unique number assigned to the customers account. This field also doubles as a submission textbox. You can enter the exact account number and press the <ENTER> key to load that account.

• Type & ID The first field on this line specifies what type of an account this is, retail, resale, or wholesale, and is taken into account in other modules. For example, the 'Quotes & Invoices' module will use this value for the estimated sale price.

The second value on this line refers to the unique ID of the account when you have more than one of the same. For example, lets say that you run a pest control company and you service a restuarante chain. Each account will obviously have the same name, but this field lets you specify the store number. So in this scenario, lets say that you have three McDonalds restuarantes, this field value could be '32553' for McDonalds store #32553.

As a site note, the 'ID' field is the middle value displayed between the square brackets in the search results from the 'Customer name' field (see above).

• Acquisition type Most organizations would like to know how they acquired their customers and this field enables you to specify that. There are several values in the list that will be covered below:

Not applicable (clear) use this value to indicate that the customer was acquired by a method not available in the list, or to clear the value for the 'Source' listbox below.

Referral (customer) specifies that the customer was acquired by referral from one of your existing customer accounts.

Referral (employee) specifies that the customer was acquired by referral from one of your current employees.

Referral (other) specifies that the customer was acquired by some other means (e.g. some type of marketing).

NOTE: a marketing module will become available in the future that will expand the above list to include all your current means of advertising.

• Source A complimentary field to the 'Acquisition type', this listbox has its values dynamically changed based on the value of the 'Acquisition type' from above. For example, if you selected 'Referral (customer)' above, then this listbox would contain all your current customer accounts so you can select which one made the referral. If 'Referral (employee)' was selected above, then the values in the list would contain all your current employees. If 'Referall (other)' is selected, then a popup will be shown so that you can enter the name of the source.

• Username This line and the next define the login credentials for the customers account into your website (if the two share the same database).

• Password There are two values on this line that may not be apparent at first glance. The first value is the password that the customer should use to login. The second value is the confirmation password. This is used to verify that you entered the value you thought you did for the first password value.

• Created by This line defines the employee that originally created this customers account and when it was created.

• Updated by Similar to the 'Created by', this line shows who modified the account last and when.

• Authorized contacts This block of fields keeps track of the people that are authorized to interact and make changes to the customer account. To add a contact, fill out all possible fields above the list at the bottom and click the '+' button. To delete a contact, select the person from the associated list and click the '-' button. Updating an account is as simple as selecting the contact from the list, updating the necessary fields, and clicking the 'Update' button. To clear this block of fields to enter a new contact, click the '*' button.

• Discounts webBooks has ways to provide global discounts using promo codes and other methods (see Inventory module), however, this section enables you to define discounts per account! Any discounts defined here are applied AFTER the account type (e.g. wholesaler, reseller, retailer) markups have been applied and the product costs have been reduced (for percentage 'Rate' values - see below). Please remember, that both the account discounts and the inventory discounts are independent of one another and are not a factor when calculating either value meaning that they are accumulative. There are several fields in top of this section that we will cover below:

Descriptive name as the name suggests, this is a descriptive name for the discount.

ID Code this listbox contains a single fixed value and all the inventory ID codes currently in the database. The fixed value '_ALL INVENTORY_' applies the discount across all purchased made by the customer account. For any other ID Code selected in the list means that the discount only applies to the selected product or service.

Type & Rate the first value on this line specifies the amount that the discount should apply to, either the total price (gross) or only on the profit (net) for the selected 'ID Code'. The second field can take several types of values and include a fixed discount (e.g. '$10' would mean a fixed ten dollars of discount), a percentage (e.g. '2%' would mean a two percent discount), or a condition (e.g. '2/10' would mean 2% discount if paid within 10 days).

• Freight accounts Like the 'Discounts' section above, this area defines the freight accounts that the customer would like to keep on file for use with any desired future purchases.

Notes

Also found in many of the modules for webBooks, this tab allows co-workers to add notes to your account. Most likely the ones adding information here will be managers, but for flexibility anyone can add notes (access should be defined by company policy). There are only three fields on this page with the 'Creator' and 'Note' values being self-explanatory. The first field, however, may need more details. This listbox is used to define who has access to the note being entered and contains two fixed values along with any number of dynamic values. The two fixed are '_EVERYONE_' and '_MANAGERS_', meaning that either everyone can see the note being entered, or only employees who have the 'Manager' flag set for their account. Any other value in the list will be a dynamic value that corresponds to each department you have entered on the 'Business Configuration' module. This in turn will restrict access to the note being entered to all employees that work in the selected department.

Data

Another tab found in many of the modules in webBooks, this page allows you to upload various data that you feel are important (or necessary) to keep on file for a particular record. You may see several default items that you can use, but you also have the ability to dynamically add any number of additional fields by clicking the 'Add new Entry' button. This gives you a way to name and select each added entry.

There are two different ways that you can upload your files. The first way is by simply clicking on the upload box itself. Please note that if you are using this way, you can click the checkbox in the lower right-hand corner to select multiple files at once. Contrarily you can also use a file manager to drag-n-drop file(s) onto the upload box. Either way will create an icon (with progress meter) for every file you are currently uploading. After you have uploaded at least one file, you will be able to select the file from any of the listbox entries. And after performing those steps, click the associated 'Update' button.

You may notice two addtional buttons next to the 'Update' buttons. These remove the entry and encrypt the file respectively. Currently the encryption button is disabled as this feature will come online in a future version.

Buttons

The buttons located in the header of each form will be covered below (see the respective sections above for inline buttons).

Clear (General)

Clicking this button will clear all the tabs loaded data so that you can create (see the 'Save' button below) or load another record (see the 'General' tab above).

Save (General)

One of two buttons available in the header of the 'General' tab, click this button once you have filled out all available fields to save or update a new or existing customer account. It is important to note that this ONLY saves information listed on this tab - no others!

Save (Notes)

The 'Save' button on this page will add the note to the list.

Common Tasks

The below sections cover several common tasks that a user may need to perform at some point in their interaction with the software. These will be expanded as time elapses.

Create a New Customer Account

When opening this module, the form comes up ready to load an existing customer account or to create a new one. If you currently have a customer account loaded and want to create a new one, simply click the 'Clear' button within the header. Otherwise, all that is necessary to create a new account is to fill out the (cleared) form and click the 'Save' button at the top of the screen.

Load an Existing Customer Account

As stated above, when you first open this module, the form will be blank by default. If you already have an account loaded and want to load a different one, then simply click the 'Clear' button in the header. Afterwards, type a portion or complete customer name into the 'Customer name' field and press the ENTER button. This will bring up a list containing all matching accounts. After clicking on the desired account, all the information will be loaded for viewing or modification. The alternative way to load the account would be to enter the exact account number in the 'Account number' field and press the ENTER button.

How to Pair webBooks

In order to take advantage of several features found only in webBooks, you must pair your software with another organization. To accomplish this task takes only a few steps. First both parties will need to go into their respective module containing the others account. For example, if you are the vendor, then you would want to go into the 'Customer Accounts' module (since that's who you will be pairing with). If you are the customer, you would need to go into the 'Business Configuration' module under the correct tab (Vendors or Providers) since that's who you will be pairing with. And finally, if you are pairing with an Additional Location, then both parties will also need to go into the 'Business Configuration' module under the 'Location' tab.

Once in the appropriate module with the correct account record loaded, both sides will need to enter the commerce information of the other party in the 'Commerce URI' and 'Commerce SID' fields. To help with this step, you will notice a 'Send' button next to the 'Commerce URI' field which will send an email containing your information to the desired receipient via their email address. It is important to note that the initial 'Commerce SID' value can be anything as long as it matches on both ends. For example, both parties can put in 'hello world' or even the letter 'a', anything that matches in both instances of webBooks. After a successful pairing, this will be replaced with a single use, auto-generated string to help prevent malicious activity.

After both parties have entered the commerce information of the other party and saved the record, only ONE of the parties needs to click the 'Pair' button next to the 'Commerce SID' field. If you receive any type of failure message, double check that the information is entered correctly and try again. Please keep in mind that both commerce fields are case sensative so make sure capital letters on one end are capital letters on the other.