The system maintains address records for your organization, customers, suppliers, salespersons, carriers, docks, end users, employees, engineers, and so on. Most address-related information is maintained in business relations; some is maintained in operational address records.

Records, called business relations, are used to manage basic address information. Business relations contain location, contact, and some tax information for all addresses defined in the system. They are created as part of corporate setup using functions found on the Address Setup Menu (36.1.4). These functions are described in QAD Financials User Guide.

Operational address records carry the address information required for operational transactions, such as the details of sales and purchasing operations—for example, the inventory site where items are ordered, the carrier used, and defaults for Enterprise Materials Transfer (EMT).

Operational address records are created in programs such as Carrier Maintenance, Customer Data Maintenance, and Salesperson Maintenance. Customers and suppliers are not available to operational functions until operational address records are created for them.

Having business relation addresses and operational address records set up in different functions supports the segregation of duties by roles. Users responsible for one type of address information are unlikely to be responsible for the other. System administrators can set up notification systems based on a group of predefined roles. Once set up, the members of various roles are automatically notified by e-mail when a new customer or supplier is created so that the required operational address records can be created.