Create a customer contact

Summary

How to create a customer contact in Sage Accounting

Description

This saves time when creating transactions and allows you to send invoices to your customers.

Use customer contact records to:

Save details about the people or businesses that you regularly do business with
Send physical copies of invoices by email or post
Keep track of who owes you money

Resolution

What you need to know

Customer records can be created 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

Ledger Account The default ledger account is 4900 Other Income
Due date - credit terms are set to 30 days by default
VAT rate - this is determined by the customer's location and whether they are VAT registered
Price - set the type of price used for common products and services such as Sales Trade or Wholesale. The default is the Sales price
Currency - set this if you invoice customers in their own currency. The default in your home or base currency

In addition, you can set other information such as:

Main Address - If you're sending invoices to your customers, you must enter an address
Delivery address - set this when the delivery address is different from the invoice address
Bank details - Store your customer's bank account details
Analysis group - Group your customers together for reporting purposes
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.

Import your customer details

Import from CSV file

Consider importing customer records if you already have the details somewhere else. Just export them to a CSV file (type of Excel spreadsheet) and import all the details in one go.

You can import additional new contacts at any time.

Import from mobile phone

If your customer details are in your mobile phone contacts, consider importing them using our mobile app.

Download the mobile app:
- If you're using an iPhone, download on the App Store
- If you're using an Android phone, get it on Google Play
Open the mobile app and from the menu choose Contacts. Select the plus button, then choose Import from phone.
Choose Customers.
From the list of contacts in your phone, choose the ones to import.
Once you've imported your contacts, edit them in the mobile or web app to enter additional details.

Create a customer

For one-off customers, or if you don't want to import them, create new customer records from Contacts.

From Contacts, choose Customers, then New Customer.
Enter the business name for 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, just enter the business name and save. All other details can be entered later.

You always need an address before you can save an invoice for a customer.

Use the following sections to choose which defaults to change and choose additional information to store about the customer.

Main address details

If you're sending invoices to your customers, you must enter an address. This is the address that appears on sales documents such as sales invoices, quotes and estimates.

If you want to email your sales documents, make sure you add an email address as well.

Add the main address from the Account 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.

Delivery address

If the business has a different delivery address, add this on the Delivery Address tab. Clear the Same as invoice address checkbox first.

Add more delivery addresses once you save the customer record. When you create an invoice, just choose which delivery address to use.

VAT details

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 Account 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.

VAT reverse charge

Select VAT Reverse Charge when:

You usually sell certain types of goods to this customer that fall under the domestic reverse charge VAT rules. See Use domestic reverse charge VAT for mobile phones and computer chips

Set a default ledger account

We use Ledger accounts 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 are making money.

Selecting the right ledger account is key to making sure you know where your money comes from and what you are selling.

On sales invoices, you must select a ledger account on each line to indicate what you have sold. You can use our default Ledger accounts or set up your own.

To make sure the right ledger account is selected automatically, you can set a default on your customer records. This is really useful if usually sell the same type of goods to a single customer.

From the Account Details tab

Choose the ledger account to use by default for this customer from the Account Default drop-down

TIP: If you usually use the same ledger account for all your sales, set this in the Record and Transaction settings. Read Record and Transactions settings

Enter payment details

If you've agreed on the credit terms with your customer, you can record them here. You can also set the credit limit.

The credit terms will set the number of days an invoice is outstanding before it needs to be paid. Once set up, the due date on the invoice is worked out based on the credit terms set here.

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.

Store bank details

If you have bank details for any of your customers you can store them on the Payment Details tab. They are not used anywhere and are just for your information.

Set a default price

If you use product and services, and use different prices, such as a retail and a wholesale price, set the price used by this customer.

For example, if the customer is a wholesaler, you're likely to always want to charge them the wholesale price. When you add a product or service to the invoice, the wholesale price will be entered automatically.

From the Defaults tab

Select the price type for this customer

Set up foreign currency customers

Set the currency for a customer when the customer is based overseas and you want to send sales invoices in their currency.

From the Account Details tab, select the Region and then the Country when entering their address.
From the Account Details tab, enter a VAT number if they are registered for tax. This will make sure that the correct VAT rate is used on invoices.
From the Defaults tab, choose the currency.

Add analysis groups

Use analysis groups to group your customers together for reporting purposes. For example, you may want to divide your customers by the region in which they are based so you can compare sales across regions, or you may want to see the total based on the sales manager to calculate commission.

Once set up, you can

Filter the Aged Debtors report by analysis group
Filter the customer list by analysis group

Notes

This is just a space for you to add any other relevant notes about your customer. The notes are not printed on any documents such as sales invoices.

About VAT contacts

If you indicated that your business is VAT registered on sign-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.