MRSweb - Lesson 5 - Customers, Accounts

9/15/2019

Lesson 5

In Lesson 4, Chapter 1 you learned the difference between Companies and Individuals. These companies and individuals are the heart of your CRM and include all companies and their employees with whom you interact - principals, customers, prospects, end users, etc.

There are two ways to view the companies who have been invoiced, at one time or another, by one of your Principals:

Customers - a list showing each customer's sales total for all principals from whom they buy
Accounts - a list showing one customer's sales total for each principal from whom they buy

Customers

Customers is a list showing a single row for each company that buys from one or more of your manufacturers. The sales numbers' shown indicate a total for all lines purchased.

This list shows:

Company name - the system name for the Customer, which may vary from the spelling the manufacturers uses for the same customer
Sales Rep - User/Territory assigned to the Customer
Last Activity - the date of the last appointment or journal linked to the Customer
YTD Sales vs Last YTD Sales - a comparison of the current year to date invoiced total versus the last year to date invoiced total
Twelve Month Touches - the number of times an appointment or journal was linked to the Customer (both the company and/or any of the individuals who work for the company)
Twelve Month Sales vs Previous Twelve Month Sales - a rolling total of the last 12 months invoiced total versus the previous 12 months invoiced total (e.g. 2/1/2021 thru 2/1/2022 versus 2/1/2020 thru 2/1/2021)
Business City - the city where the Customer is located
Business State - the state where the Customer is located
Business Address - the street, city, state, and zip code where the Customer is located
Created On - the date the Customer was added to the system
Last Modified - the date the Customer information was last edited/updated
Effective access - who can view the Customer

There are pre-filtered views in the Customers sidebar that, if selected, display only those customers who meet the criteria for each view. For instance, to see a list of just the customers who:

are currently active, select "Active Customers"
are new (within the last 2 months), select "New Customers"
do not have a sales rep assigned to the customer, select "Unassigned Customers"
are no longer buying from your manufacturers, but are still in business, select "Hidden Customers"

Selecting any of these views saves time by eliminating the need to sort or filter a larger customer list.

Accounts

Accounts is a list showing one row, with an account number, for each principal from whom the customer buys. A single customer may have multiple rows, one row for each principal from whom they buy. The sales number shown on each line is a total for each principal.

This list shows:

Customer name - the system name for the Company, which may vary from the spelling the manufacturers uses for the same Company
Sales Rep - User/Territory assigned to the account
Manufacturer - the name of the (Principal) from whom the customer buys
Account Number - the Customer's unique identifying number for each manufacturer
YTD Sales vs LYTD Sales for each manufacturer - a comparison of the current year to date invoiced totals versus the last year to date invoiced totals
Created On: - the date the Account was added to the system
Last Modified - Date the Account was last edited/updated
Effective access - who can view the Customer's accounts

If there are no account numbers in the system, there will be no entries in Accounts.

By using account numbers you have the ability to sort and filter by manufacturer to easily see who is buying (and who is not) from a manufacturer and who your best customer's are per line.

For more information on account numbers: Account Numbers, to use them and which to use

2 Comments

Louis

11/22/2022 11:42:29 am

Under the Contacts menu, Companies is for everyone you engage with while Customers is specifically for the businesses buying from your manufacturers. You have some options when it comes to adding new Customers to the system:

1. Let the Update Records do it for you. When a blank is seen in the Customer Id and/or Customer Account Id, those entries will be created for you during import (you can't have an Invoice without a Customer, so it has to create anyone that wasn't already in the system and matched).

Update Records creates all of the associated entries -- Company, Customer, and Account Number for the Manufacturer being imported. If the Address information is in the import file, that will be added too. Otherwise, you can go to Companies after import and add the phone, address, etc. You can also go to Customers after and assign the correct Sales Rep.

2. Do it manually. The advantage here is that you can assign the Sales Rep ahead of time, so that every entry later imported already has the correct assignment. You could also add a new Account Number to an existing Customer entry, so that no matter what different Manufacturers have for the Company Name your name is used instead.

I think it is easier to start in Customers, when you know the company is going to have invoices. Click the New button. If the Company entry already exists, start typing and select from the auto-complete list; if its someone new to the system, choose "Create New". After you Save, you will be presented with the space to add Account Number(s).

You can also import Customers lists. For example, if you sign-up a new Manufacturer and they send over a Customer list with Account Numbers, you could import that ahead of time.

Louis

11/28/2022 04:14:43 pm

Q: Last week I entered 2 new customers, that show up if I select new customers, but not under active customers. Today I entered 6 new customers in MRSware Desktop and they’re not showing up anywhere in MRSweb. Please advise.

A: When on the Customer page, the Filtered Views available include Active Customers, New Customers, and All Customers. Filtered Views are those that take the full list of Customers (in this case) and exclude some of the list to present the User with a smaller, more focused list of what is of interest at the moment (filtered).

Each Filtered View has different criteria to present you things of interest. For our list of examples above, the filter criteria is listed directly below the selector, above the table, and reads like this:

* Active Customers: Customers that have sales in the last years
* New Customers: Customers created in the last 2 months
* All Customers: This is a list of all customers

Active is meant to exclude those entries that haven't made purchases in a while; and New is meant to show you entries that have been recently created. All shows all the entries that have not been specifically marked Hidden.

For the specific question above, the 2 new customers would show up under New Customers since they have been recently created. They do not show under Active Customers as they have not had any sales entered against them yet. You will also find all entries (with or without sales, created recently or created months ago) under the All Customers view.

MRSweb will remember which Filtered View you had last selected (as well as any filters or sorting done within that view), so that next time you return to the page, you can pick up right where you left off... That also might mean if you were in a View that wouldn't show new entries, they won't show until you change views or remove any filters.

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MRSweb - Lesson 5 - Customers, Accounts

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