Awhile ago, we covered the Item Card’s fields and what functionality they provide. Relatedly, we thought covering Business Central’s Customer Card fields would be helpful for readers. The good news is we can cover this within two blogs instead of four! So in this post, we will cover the ‘General’, ‘Address & Contact’ and ‘Invoicing’ tabs.
General
No.
The No. field is focal to all of Business Central records. It’s what helps users identify which record something relates to. When you’re migrating data, it’s a field you can’t choose to omit; it’s crucial to the system.
By and large, users tend to generate the No. field value on records automatically, by having a pre-existing number series in place. By creating a new record on the No. Series page, making sure ‘Default No.s’ is ticked and that ‘Manual No.s’ isn’t, you can make sure there’s consistency in the number values you apply to customer records. It will assign numbers successively between the range set in the Starting No. and Ending No. values.
To establish that this new number series is only applicable to customer records, go to the Sales & Receivables Setup page and in the Number Series tab, select the relevant value for the Customer No.s field. When you next create a customer record, by tabbing off the No. field, the system will automatically generate a unique value for the record.
Name
The ‘Name’ field next is the associated description for the particular No. value.
IC Partner Code
The IC Partner Code refers to intercompany. The field specifically dictates which Intercompany Partner Code you want to tie to the Customer Card. The Intercompany Partner Code is set on the Intercompany Setup page. As you are relating an intercompany record with the customer, you would associate a different Business Central company with the Customer, as opposed to the one you are already in. We previously covered Business Central’s intercompany setup and transactions in two blogs. The first post is more conceptual and covers the various setup screens that require configuration. The second is a demonstration of intercompany in action.
Balance (LCY)
The Balance (LCY) field simply specifies the amount the customer owes.
Balance Due (LCY)
The Balance Due (LCY) field specifies the amount the customer owes, that is overdue according to the work date you have set.
Credit Limit (LCY)
The Credit Limit field dictates how much a particular customer can owe to you before the system issues a notification to the user. On the Sales & Receivables page, you can specify whether you wish to receive notifications for overdue balances too.
If you set a Credit Limit value that’s currently exceeded by the customer, it will turn the value red, emboldened and italicised:
A Credit Limit value that’s currently not in excess looks like this:
On a sales quote, order or invoice, when you have an exceeded credit limit or overdue balance, you’ll get a notification at the top of the screen, subject to the configuration of the Credit Warnings field in the Sales & Receivables Setup page. It’s worth noting this won’t stop you from posting anything, it’s just to inform you.
Blocked
This field disables utility for the Card. If a record is set to blocked, dependant on whether that’s for ‘Ship’, ‘Invoice’ or ‘All’, the ability to perform any of these actions will be prevented.
Privacy Blocked
The Privacy Blocked field allows you to restrict data processing for the record in question. If you set this field to enabled, the Blocked field will also be set to enabled.
Salesperson Code
The Salesperson Code allows you to assign predefined salespeople to Customer records. When it comes to reporting, this can be a useful way of segregating data.
Responsibility Center
The Responsibility Center field allows users to split their business into different parts. Each responsibility center can reflect a cost centre, purchasing department or sales office. Using this functionality, users can create purchasing and sales documents specific to a particular responsibility center. Again, for reporting, this provides a valuable means of segregating data.
Against a Responsibility Centre Card, you have many of the generic fields that you would against other Business Central records. Notably, you have a Location Card field. This allows you tie this entity to a location you’ve already set up. It’s possible to have multiple responsibility centres against a singular location.
One important thing to note is that you can set a default Responsibility Center value against your environment. To do this, establish it on the the Shipping tab of the Company Information page. For records which don’t have specific Responsibility Centre values against them, the system will use this value.
As a final note for responsibility centres, you can actually attach them to users of the system. To do this, on the User Setup page, against the user in question, you can assign different values against purchase, sales and service responsibility centres. This offers an alternative means filtering your transactional data by user.
Service Zone Code
A service zone in Business Central reflects a geographical area. These are set against users and customers to determine where their default service area is. An example of the type of issue this would look to stop is having users who live in Plymouth being tasked with performing a service in Newcastle.
Document Sending Profile
The Document Sending Profile defines the way in which the customer wishes to be contacted. If you select select Email or Direct to File, you can define either as the standard for all customers unless specified otherwise. As well as this, you can configure other settings like the type of attachment used. For example, PDF.
Disable Search by Name
By enabling this field, users can amend the customer name on open sales documents. This won’t amend the Name value on the Customer Card.
Address & Contact
This section, for the most part, is very straightforward. The only ones that might not be clear are the last three.
Language Code
This is simply the language that will be used for the documents sent to the Customer.
Contact Code
This field relates to the main person contact related with the customer. In Business Central, remember there are both company and person contact cards. So in essence, this is a quick way of finding out who is the main source of contact at the company in question.
Contact Name
Like with ‘No’ and ‘Name’ before, the Contact Name field essentially acts as the description associated with the Contact Code. Obviously without an associated name, having a Contact Code of CT000001 isn’t that helpful in telling you who to contact!
Show on Map
This field (or link) takes the values you entered into the address and post code fields and uses them to pinpoint on Google Maps where exactly the Customer site is located.
Invoicing
Bill-to Customer
The Bill-to Customer field is only relevant where the customer invoices should be sent to an entity other than this particular customer. This might be an entirely separate company or it might be the head offices of the customer in question. It’s common practice for separate customer cards to be set up reflecting different branches of the same business. For example, having separate customer cards for a company which has branches in Birmingham, Leeds and Exeter.
VAT Registration No.
Every company has unique VAT Registration No. In the United Kingdom, this number establishes how much VAT a company is required to pay.
EORI Number
EORI stands for Economic Operators Registration and Identification. As a result of Brexit, EORI numbers are required to move goods between European and British borders. In Business Central, you can set this field against different entities like Customer or Vendor cards. As well as this, you can input it on behalf of your own company, on the Company Information page.
GLN
GLN stands for Global Location Number. It’s a unique, 13 digit reference number used to identify companies and other entities. Someone searching a GLN into a database would be able to see related information tied to that record. The GLN itself is a reference to a location. these can be one of the following:
- Physical location
- A specific address, or reference to somewhere even more specific, like a room or area of a building.
- Legal entity
- This could be a company, its subsidiary or a division of that company.
- Functional location
- This refers to a virtual address, like a network address. This allows messages to be passed back and forth.
Use GLN in Electronic Documents
By enabling this field, you have the ability to use it as an identifier in electronic documents.
Copy Sell-to Addr. to Qte From
Using this field, you can create invoices against an individual, rather than a company. In those instances, you likely will use a different address. This field allows you to select which address it is that will go on sales documents.
Gen. Bus. Posting Group
The General Business Posting Group field is on both Customer and Vendor Cards. Using the value in that field as well as the General Prod. Posting Group on an Item Card, the matrix on the General Posting Setup page maps which accounts are posted into when transacting.
VAT Bus. Posting Group
This field is where you specify how VAT is calculated for this customer. The VAT Bus and VAT Prod. Posting Group values together go into the VAT Posting Setup matrix which dictates which accounts are posted to when transacting with the customer.
Customer Posting Group
The Customer Posting Group determines the balance sheet account that balances gets posted into. The reason you might have multiple is because of postings for different things. For example, one for intercompany postings or another for sales to staff members.
Currency Code
This is the field that determines the currency the customer uses. Where it’s the local currency, you can leave this field blank. You can set the local currency on the General Ledger Setup page.
Customer Price Group
This and the following field are similar but work in different ways. Both are centred around providing cheaper prices than the standard amount on the item card. The Customer Price Group allows you to set specific prices on goods for particular customers, which form a group.
Customer Disc. Group
A customer discount group is a collection of customers that are all given the same discount percentage on particular items. Dependant on the item, the percentage discount could vary but what’s key is that each customer in the group gets the same discount, regardless of the item.
Allow Line Disc.
The Allow Line Discount field allows users to set discounts for customer related documents on the line level.
Invoice Disc. Code
On a Customer Card, you can access invoice discounts by clicking ‘More options’, ‘Related’, ‘Prices & Discounts’ and ‘Invoice Discounts’. In my example below, I have established that for this particular customer, regardless what they buy, any orders exceeding a value of £5 will result in a 5% discount. Additionally, for any orders over £30, the discount will be 10%.
As you can see, you can make multiple lines to create additional conditions, even factoring in different currencies. In the ‘Currency Code’ field, enter the code for a currency that the invoice discount terms on the line applies to. You can repeat this for each currency that the customer will receive a different invoice discount for. In the ‘Minimum Amount’ field, enter the minimum amount that an invoice must have to be eligible for the discount. In the ‘Discount %’ field, enter the invoice discount as a percentage of the invoice amount. The invoice discount is now set up. When you select the customer code in the ‘Invoice Discount Code’ field on other customer records, the same invoice discount will be assigned to those customers.
On a sales order, I made two orders for the same customer, only one has a higher value. As you can see below, the level of discount being offered is different:
In the second image, there’s a 10% invoice discount as the quantity and subtotal is higher:
When handling discounts for customers, make sure you have the Sales & Receivables Setup page fields configured accordingly. In this instance, I have Discount Posting set to ‘All Discounts’. Additionally, Calc. Inv. Discount is enabled.
Prices Including VAT
As the tooltip states, this field lets you choose whether or not to display VAT for Unit Price and Line Amount fields on document lines. Below is a screenshot of an order where this field is disabled:
Below is another screenshot, this time with the field enabled:
Whether or not you choose to toggle this field, all the details will be shown on the Statistics subpage on any order or invoice.
Concluding remarks
Thanks for reading! Expect our second instalment on Business Central’s Customer Card fields soon. If there’s any topics you’d like us to cover in future, please get in contact with us. We are happy to answer any questions you have! Lastly, to never miss one of our posts, follow us on LinkedIn.