Customers represent the companies that purchase your goods and services. They are referenced on sales quotations, sales orders, invoices, and in accounts receivable. They are also used for service and support documents, such as calls, contracts, and return material authorizations (RMAs).

Customers are created and all financial related data, such as credit limits and accounts, are defined by designated users with access to financial functions. After a customer has been created and set up by an authorized role, additional operational data, such as the default inventory site for sales transactions, can be associated with the record in Customer Data Maintenance (2.1.1). For details, see QAD Master Data User Guide.

Values associated with customer addresses determine default values in functions that reference customers, as well as determining how customer transactions are processed. For example, Credit Hold determines whether orders for a customer are automatically put on credit hold.

A sales order or sales quotation can reference up to three customer addresses. These addresses can reference the same business relation or different business relations.

Sales order header information, such as default credit terms and currency, is determined by the bill-to customer. Other fields default from the sold-to customer, unless a customer record was entered for the ship-to address for the order. These include language, taxable status, and other tax defaults.

During order entry, the bill-to address defaults from the sold-to, unless a different bill-to address is assigned to the sold-to customer. The ship-to address also defaults from the sold-to address. If alternate ship-to addresses are defined, they can be selected as needed.

Before setting up customers, you must first define customer type codes and credit rating codes, described next. Customers also require GL profiles for defining:

You must set up the accounts and profiles before defining customers.

See Setting Up General Ledger.