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Customers buy your products and services. They are created, edited and managed from the Sales module.


Set Credit Limits for your customers and implement Credit Holds, either automatically when outstanding payments are overdue or manually at any time.


Send your customers statements of their sales activity and outstanding balances with Customer Sales Statements


Prerequisites


Table of Contents


Customer permissions

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DEAR offers fine-grained control over user permissions. Grant users full or read-only permission to the different features of the sales module, and create roles with pre-defined permissions to assign to users.


DEAR allows you to set the following permissions for customers (Settings → Users and Roles):


Customers List & Editing: (Read-only) View customers list and customer details. View customer credits. (Full Access) Add and edit customers and customer credits. 


Customer – Enable/Disable Credit Hold: Enable or disable manual Credit Hold on a customer. 

Customer Sales History: Makes visible Sales by Product and Sales by Document tabs on the customer details screen.

Customer Payment: Access and make bulk customer payments. 

  • NOTE: This does not affect payments on individual invoices.


Purchase/Sale CSV Import

Import purchase and sales tasks via CSV. This is accessed from Purchase → Purchases → Import or Sale → Sales → Import


NOTE: This permission is not required to import purchase/sale order lines via CSV.


See Managing Users and Roles and User permissions explained.


Create a new customer

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Navigate to Sale → New → Customer or Sale → Customers and click + to add a new customer. 


Customers can also be created during a sale, where pressing + next to the customer name field will open a pop-up window where customer details can be entered. 


Customers can be imported in bulk via CSV file.


Enter customer general details

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If default values for new Customer records have been set up previously in Settings → Reference Books → Default Field Values, the applicable fields will be pre-filled with these values. If default values are not set up, all fields will be empty. Regardless of whether default values are set up or not, all fields on the New Customer page remain editable. For more information, see Default Field Values for New Customers.


Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory.


To enter a customer's details:

  1. Enter the Customer name
  2. The new customer's status is set to Active by default. Do not change this. The other status is Deprecated - this will only be used to deprecate the customer (see Deprecate Customers).
  3. Enter the Customer currency.

NOTE: It is important to provide the right currency that the customer operates in as DEAR Inventory automatically creates a currency conversion at the time of making a sale. If the currency of the customer is different from your base currency, a currency conversion will occur. The exchange rate can be modified at the time of the sale to reflect the actual rate.

  1. Choose a Payment Term, an Account Payable and a Tax Rule (see Prerequisites).
  2. Select a Default Carrier (optional) for the customer. This will be pre-filled in the sale shipping information but can be changed at the time of the sale.
  3. Choose a Sales Representative (optional).
  4. Enter a Tax number (optional).
  5. Apply a Discount to the customer (optional). If this customer has a standing discount with you, enter a number in this field to apply it to sale order lines for this customer. 

NOTE: Entering '10' into the discount field will apply a 10% discount to sale order lines. This can be manually altered when processing a sale.

  1. Enter a Credit Limit (optional). Credit Limits can either notify you that a customer's credit limit has been reached at the time of creating the sale order for that customer or it can physically stop you from processing a particular sale order until outstanding balances have been paid. If left blank, customers will not be given a credit limit and can run up any balance. 
  2. Apply other custom fields using Additional Attributes (optional).
  3. Add Tags to classify customers and search for them later (optional). Separate tags by commas.
  4. Add Comments which will be added to documents (optional). These comments will automatically be added/displayed on the Note field on the Customer section creating sales orders. See Processing a Sale for more information.


Add addresses

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Once general information has been provided for a customer, addresses can be added. Multiple addresses can be added for the same customer. Each type of address (Business, Shipping, Billing) must be correctly identified for each customer so that this information is correctly displayed on invoices, sale orders or any other DEAR Inventory document.


Customer addresses can be imported in bulk via CSV file.


To add an address for a customer:

  1. Select Addresses from the left menu. 
  2. Click or Add new address.
  3. Fill in the customer’s address details.
  4. Choose whether it is a Business, Shipping or Billing Address.
  5. Repeat for as many addresses as necessary.
  6. If the customer has multiple addresses of one type, select a default address for that type by checking the Default for Type box.


Add contacts

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One or more contacts can be added for a customer. If multiple contacts are added, a default contact must be selected.


Customer contacts can be imported in bulk via CSV file.


To add a contact for a customer:

  1. Select Contacts from the left menu. 
  2. Click or Add new contact.
  3. Fill in the customer contact’s details.
  4. Repeat for as many contacts as necessary.
  5. Select a default contact for the customer.
  6. Click Save. The customer can now be used to produce sale orders and sale invoices within DEAR Inventory.


Marketing consent

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A key process for many in-store retail clients is the ability to capture a customer’s email and consent at the point of sale to then integrate with their CRM (HubSpot etc) for marketing communications. 


This option can be edited on the Contacts section, and can be imported in bulk when importing lists of customer contacts. If a customer has multiple customer contacts, marketing consent can be edited for each contact individually. The available options are:

  • Opt in: This customer has opted in to receiving marketing communications. 
  • Opt out: This customer has opted out of receiving marketing communications. 
  • Unknown: This customer has not communicated their opinion and should be asked before sending any communications. 


Cin7 Core POS allows customers to be marked as opted-in, opted-out or undecided to marketing communications. Users carrying out POS sales will be able to capture this information and sync it to Cin7 Core when adding a customer to a POS sale. 


Set default values for new customers

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DEAR allows default field values to be configured for new products, customers and suppliers, allowing faster and more convenient data entry from anywhere within the system. When default field values are set up for customers, any time a new customer is created from within DEAR, the available fields are pre-filled with these values. Default values can be edited during or after customer creation if required.


Default field values are set up from Settings → Reference Books. After navigating to Reference Books, you should see the Default Field Values section. From here, select Customer.


Select default values from the dropdown menus and Save your changes to continue. 


Import customer details

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Customer details can also be imported from a CSV template. This is useful for quickly adding many customers, customer addresses, or customer contacts in bulk. It is important that the column names and order are not changed when editing the CSV template.


Import customer list

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Import large numbers of customer details via CSV file to save time.


To import a list of customers:

  1. Navigate to Sale → Customers.
  2. Click Import → Customers.
  3. Download the customer CSV template.
  4. Populate the template with the customer values, making sure the information matches the column headings. The column headings must not be changed for the import to work.
  5. Save the CSV Template.
  6. Browse your files for the populated CSV file and click Upload.


Import customer addresses

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Import large numbers of customer addresses via CSV file to save time.


To import a list of customer addresses:

  1. Navigate to Sale → Customers.
  2. Click Import → Customer Addresses.
  3. Download the customer addresses CSV template.
  4. Populate the template with the customer address values, making sure the information matches the column headings. The column headings must not be changed for the import to work. Multiple addresses can be added for the same customer by adding new address lines with the same customer name. The Action column can be used to delete a customer address by typing in DELETE.
  5. Save the CSV Template.
  6. Browse your files for the populated CSV file and click Upload.

Import customer contacts

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Import large numbers of customer contacts via CSV file to save time.


To import a list of customer contacts:

  1. Navigate to Sale → Customers.
  2. Click Import → Customer Contacts.
  3. Download the customer contacts CSV template.
  4. Populate the template with the customer contact values, making sure the information matches the column headings. The column headings must not be changed for the import to work. The Action column can be used to delete a customer address by typing in DELETE.
  5. Save the CSV Template.
  6. Browse your files for the populated CSV file and click Upload.


Edit customer details in bulk

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Aside from the ability to edit customer details individually, customer details can be exported as a CSV file and edited in bulk. This method can be used for customers, customer addresses and customer contacts.


To edit customer details in bulk:

  1. Navigate to Sale → Customers.
  2. Select the appropriate Export option (Export → Customers, Export → Customer Addresses, Export → Customer Contacts).
  3. Save and open the CSV template.
  4. Edit the details that need to be updated. Do not change any of the column headings to prevent any errors during the upload.
  5. Save the CSV Template.
  6. Upload the edited template using Import.


Sales history

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You can view your a Customer's sales history from their page. Choose to view Sales by Product or Sales by Document (Sale Order). 


Use Sales by Product to see:

  • SKU
  • Product
  • Invoice #
  • Invoice Date
  • Quantity
  • Price


Use Sales by Document to see:

  • Quote/Order#
  • Status
  • Customer Reference
  • Order date
  • Ship By date
  • Invoice total
  • Amount paid



Invitations to B2B Portal

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DEAR Inventory's B2B eCommerce Portal enables your customers to browse and order from your catalogue 24/7. You can invite a customer directly from the Customer record. 


  1. Go to Sale Customers.
  2. Search for the customer to be invited, then click to open the customer record.
  3. Click Invitations, then click the Email icon to send the invitation to the customer.


See Getting Started with B2B Portal for more information. 


Custom Product Prices

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You can set custom prices for the products in your inventory for selected customers. Custom prices take precedence over regular product prices. This means that they are used in place of the regular product price.


Custom prices can be set up one product at a time from a product's or a customer's Details page. They can also be set up for several products at once by uploading a CSV file in the required format via DEAR Inventory's Import module.


See Custom Prices for more information. 


Attach Documents

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Documents up to 10MB  can be dragged and dropped to the Attachments tab for future reference.


Set default templates for sales documents and emails

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The Default Templates tab allows you to select the default document and email templates to be used for this customer's sale documents (e.g. sale invoice, sale order, etc.) Select templates from the dropdown fields and Save your changes. Only one template can be set as default for each sale document. 


See Managing document and email templates for more information about adding and customising templates. 


If a default template has been set for a sale document (e.g. sale order), only this template will be shown when the Print/Email button is pressed. If no default template is set for a sale document, all available templates for that type of document will be shown when Print/Email is pressed.


Activity log

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The Activity Log tab shows any changes that users or the system have made to the Customer record.


Customer sales statements (outstanding balances)

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A Customer Sales Statement Report is a report consisting of a consolidated list of all the transactions carried out for a particular customer.


It is a good business practice to send regular statements to your customers so they are aware of the amounts still owing on their account. There are two options:


  • Sale Statement Activity – Activity statement will show all activity within the selected date range. If there are invoices still unpaid from before the date range you have selected, these will be summarised as a brought forward balance. Then all the invoices and payments received within the selected period will be listed giving you a total due balance at the end. This is often the preferred method when you are issuing several invoices per month to a customer.

    • Sale Statement Outstanding – This statement will show all invoices with outstanding amounts left on them as of the date you have selected. This option is useful when a customer wants a complete list of all unpaid invoices going all the way to the beginning rather than older period ones been represented just as a brought forward balance.


The customer list (Sale → Customers) can be filtered according to only show customers with an outstanding balance. Clicking the Due header can then sort customers according to highest outstanding balance. See Customer Sales Statement Reports (Outstanding Balances) for more information. 



Credit Limits and Credit Holds

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Set Credit Limits for your customers and implement Credit Holds, either automatically when outstanding payments are overdue or manually at any time. User permissions can be set to either receive a notification when customers are on Credit Hold or have exceeded their Credit Limit, or to block any sale authorisation. 


See Credit Limits and Credit Holds for more information. 


Deprecate customers

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Customers can be deprecated when they are no longer active or in use. Deprecated customers will no longer appear to be selected for sales operations. You can deprecate a single customer or multiple customers at once.


To deprecate a customer:

  1. Navigate to Sale → Customers and click on the customer record. 
  2. Change the status from Active to Deprecated
  3. Save your changes.


To deprecate multiple customers at once, you need to use a CSV template. 


To deprecate multiple customers at once:

  1. Export your customer list by navigating to Sale Customers and clicking Export Customers
  2. Download and open the CSV template.
  3. Under the Status column, change the status of customers to be deprecated from Active to Deprecated. Do not change the column headings to prevent any errors during the upload.
  4. Save the CSV template.
  5. On the Customers screen, click Import > Customers, then select the edited CSV template from your PC.
  6. Upload the edited template.


Delete deprecated customers

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Deprecated customers can be deleted from DEAR if they have not yet been used in any sales transaction. Customers that have been used in transactions cannot be deleted from DEAR.


To delete deprecated customers:

  1. Navigate to Sale Customers.
  2. Click on More Actions Delete deprecated .
  3. On the Delete deprecated customers window, click Delete. A summary is displayed at the conclusion of the operation.


Merge customers

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Multiple customer records can be merged into a single record.


NOTE: Merging customers is not reversible. You will need to merge the same customers in your accounting software.


To merge customer records:

  1. Navigate to Sale Customers
  2. Check boxes to indicate customer records to merge. 
  3. Click More Actions Merge selected customers.
  4. Select the primary customer record and click Merge to confirm.


NOTE: Customer fields that only allow a single value (Tax Rule, Currency, etc.) will take the value of the primary customer record. Customer addresses and customer contacts from all merged customers will be transferred to the primary customer. All transactions involving merged customers will now point to the primary customer.


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