What you need to knowYou can create Contacts with as little information as a Name. Choose to keep our defaults or enter your own information. You can do this now or come back and edit the record at any time. When you start entering transactions such as sales invoices, we use the information set on the customer record to determine the following - Category - The default ledger account is 4900 Other Income
- Due date - This is set to 30 days by default
- VAT rate - This is determined by the customer's location and whether they are VAT registered
In addition, you can set other information such as - Bank details - Store your customer's bank account details
- Notes - use this for any other information you’d like to store about this customer
See the following sections for more information about each section.
Already have a customer list?Import from CSV file (comma-separated values)Consider importing customer records if you already have the details somewhere else. Just export them to a CSV file and import all the details in one go. You can import additional new contacts at any time, read more about how to import customer and supplier contacts.
Create a customerFor one-off customers, or if you don't want to import them, create new customer records from Contacts. - From Contacts, choose New Customer.
- Enter the business name of the customer. This is the name you'll see on all lists when selecting this customer.
- Enter the remaining details. If you don't know all the details yet, simply enter the business name and save. You must always provide an address before saving an invoice for a customer.
Use the following sections to choose which defaults to change and choose additional information to store about the customer. If you're sending invoices to your customers, you must enter an address. This is the address that appears on sales invoices. If you want to email your sales documents, make sure you add an email address as well. Add the main address from the Contact Details tab. If your customer is outside the UK or Ireland, make sure your change the region just above the address and then choose the correct Country.  TIP: If you don't have an address for a customer, just use No address on the first line.
If your customer is VAT registered, enter their VAT registration number to make sure we use the correct VAT rate when entering invoices. Enter the VAT registration number from the Contact Details tab. We check the VAT number against the Country entered in the address. You cannot save the VAT number unless it has the correct format. We use categories to categorise or group your transactions. This is to make sure they report correctly on financial reports, such as the Profit and Loss or Balance sheet. It also helps you track your business performance and see where you're making money. Selecting the right category is critical to making sure you know where your money comes from and what you are selling. On sales invoices, you must select a category on each line to indicate what you have sold. You can use our default categories or set up your own. Set a default category on customer records to automatically select the correct category. This feature especially helps when consistently selling the same type of goods to a specific customer. From the Contact Details tab - Choose the category to use by default for this customer from the Default Category drop-down
TIP: Set this in the Record and Transactions settings if you usually use the same category for all your sales, take a look at our Record and Transactions settings. If you've agreed to credit terms with your customer, you can record them here. Set credit terms to specify the number of days an invoice can be outstanding. After setting them, the system calculates the invoice's due date based on these terms. We've set the credit terms to 30 days as this is usual for most businesses. If your credit terms are different, set them in the Record and transaction settings so they applied to all new customer records, or if this customer has unusual credit terms, enter them here. You can input your customers' bank details on the Payment Details tab for your records. Use this space to jot down any pertinent notes about your customer. Please note that these notes do not appear on printed documents like sales invoices.
About VAT contacts >
If you indicated that your business is registered for VAT in Accounting Start when you signed up, there will already be two contacts on the list. You'll use the Revenue Reclaimed customer contact when you reclaim VAT and the Revenue Payments supplier contact when you make VAT payments. You can change the reference for these contacts but you cannot rename or delete them. [BCB:299:UKI - Personal content block - Dane:ECB][BCB:301:UKI - Search override - Start IE:ECB] [BCB:276:UKI - hide back button:ECB] |