How to

How to add a customer

A new account just signed, or a caller wants a quote, and they need to exist in the system before anything else can happen. A customer in BasicBMS is one profile: who they are, who you talk to there, how to reach them, and how they want their invoices. Quotes, invoices, payments, work orders, service points and the Jabber log all hang off it.

Before you start

  • Your login can create customers. Creating one takes customer admin rights; most office logins have them.
  • Have the name of the person who pays the bills and their email. Invoices are emailed to a contact, not to the customer record.
  • Search the list first. Nothing stops you creating the same customer twice.

Steps

  1. In the left menu, open Customer → Management. The Customer Management list opens.

  2. Click New Customer and pick the form to use. Most companies have one, called Basic.

  3. The customer is created on the spot and their profile opens. Customer ID is already filled in from your numbering. To use a different one, click Edit, change it or click Get Next Number, then Save.

  4. Type the Name. It shows red until it's filled in. There is no Save button for this section: every change saves itself, and the app says Profile Saved!

  5. Set the rest of Basic Info if they apply: Account Rep, Invoice delivery (Paper, Email or Both; it starts at Paper), Late fees (Charge or Exempt; it starts at Charge) and a Note.

  6. Under Customer Details, set Terms and, if you need it, the TIN. Leave Active ticked.

  7. Under Contacts, click Add. Choose a Contact Type (Primary for the main person), and fill in First Name, Last Name and Email. Click Save; the app says Contact Saved! Add anyone else the same way, such as an Accounts Payable contact.

  8. Under Customer Address, click Add, choose the Style (Address, PO Box, Coordinates or FreeHand), fill it in and click Save.

  9. Under Customer Phone, click Add. Fill in Type, Country Code, Area Code, Prefix and Line Number, then Save.

  10. That's the customer. Use the jump menu at the top to go to their Dashboard, Quotes or Invoices, where New Invoice and New Quote start the first piece of work.

Your form may look different. The customer form is built from a template your administrator can change. Some companies add Payment Methods (a card on file through Stripe, with Auto-Charge) or Online Account (a code the customer uses to sign in to the member portal). The steps above are the stock Basic form.

Water utilities: the customer comes first. A service point is always billed to a customer, so add the customer, then put them on the service point.

What posts behind it

Nothing. Adding a customer writes no ledger entry. The first entry comes from their first invoice or payment.

One thing to know: an invoice copies the customer's contact and address when it is created, as its Sold To, Bill To and Ship To. Add the contact with an email and the address before you make the first invoice. Details added afterwards don't reach invoices that already exist.

When it won’t let you

Red field(s) are required, information was not saved! A phone or contact is missing a required field. A contact needs Contact Type, First Name and Last Name; a phone needs every part of the number.

Change Primary Contact? You're saving a contact on a customer that already has a Primary contact. If the new contact is the Primary, Yes makes it so and turns the old one into an Alternate.

Changes not saved - please fix validation errors A Customer Details field has a value it can't take, such as text in a number field.

No BillTo contact with email found on this invoice You emailed an invoice and nobody on it has an email address. Add an email to the customer's contact, then send it again.

What this doesn't do

There is no bulk import of customers from this screen. If you're moving from another system, your implementation loads the customer list for you. Customers can't be deleted, because invoices and payments point at them; untick Active instead, and they drop out of the customer pickers. There is no separate business-versus-individual type: a household and a company are both just a name with contacts.

Related

Stuck on this one? Call (509) 955-0770 and we'll walk through it with you.

BasicBMS

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