Adding Customer Accounts

The Accounts module is used to manage customer information such as default pricing, sales tax rates, order history, and more.

An Account must be created for the customer in order to create Sales Orders, Quotes, etc.

All Accounts should also have a Contact.
Contacts are used for CRM purposes and emailing invoices, receipts, etc. For instructions on creating contacts, please see this link.
Multiple Contacts can be assigned to one Account.
The Account name can be the name of the customer's business, or just the customer's name.

To add an Account, follow the "New Account" link as shown below.

This brings up the form shown below so the information associated with this Account can be entered.

The fields with * beside them are required.
Recommended fields for setup include:
Default Pricebook - indicates default pricing customers receive when orders are processed (some channels require customer specific pricing to be turned "on" to enable).
Default Payment Method - indicates type of payment normally made by customer, payment method can be changed when placing orders.
Default Tax Authority - this indicates the sales tax rate customers are charged on their orders
Billing/Shipping Address - this is required when creating sales orders.
Click Save to save the information.

Credit Card as a default Payment Method

When credit card is selected as the default payment method, the customers primary credit card can be entered and saved. Each time an order is created in the back office, this credit card information will appear on the order by default.

To enter a default credit card:

Select "Credit Card" in the Payment Method drop down list.
Click the + Add New Card button.

Enter the Credit Card information in the fields as shown below. If this is the default credit card for the account, select the "Default Card" checkbox.
Click the red check mark icon to save the credit card info.

Upon clicking the red check mark, the information will display as masked as shown below.
To add another credit card, click the + Add New Card button and repeat the process.

When selecting the customer's account on a sales order, the credit card information will automatically populate as shown below.

Account Custom Fields

In the event the standard form fields do not provide all options you would like to see displayed with the customer account, custom fields can be added to the account form. Instructions for creating custom fields can be found here.

The data contained in a custom field created in the Account (or Contact) can be transferred to a Sales Order or Quote if needed.

To accomplish this, the custom field must be created in both the Account module and in the Sales Order and/or Quote module.
Please note this feature also applies to custom fields created in the Contact module, creating the custom field in the Contact and Sales Order/Quote modules will yield the same results as outlined in this process.
The custom field name and type must match in both places or the data will not transfer (learn more about custom field types here).

An example can be found below using the custom field Membership Number. We want this information to appear on a new Sales Order when created.

Create a custom field under Settings > Custom Field Settings > Account Custom Fields.
This field was created as type = text, and we entered 255 for the maximum character length for this field.

Create the same custom field under Settings > Custom Field Settings > Sales Order Custom Fields
This field was created as type = text, and we entered 255 for the maximum character length for this field.

Create a new Account (or edit an existing account) and enter text into the Membership Number field for the account. For this example, we edited Rick Strong's account.

Create a new Sales Order, and select the account on the order (for our example, Rick Strong).
The Membership Number auto-populates onto the Sales Order as shown below.

The same feature applies to the Quotes Module as shown below. Adding a custom field to the Account Name and Quote will yield the same results as the Sales Order. the information will auto-populate upon the Account Name Selection.

Create a custom field under Settings > Custom Field Settings > Quote Custom Fields.
This field was created as type = text, and we entered 255 for the maximum character length for this field.

Create a new Quote, and select the account on the order (for our example, Rick Strong).
The Membership Number auto-populates onto the Quote as shown below.