Customer Settlement Terms

The 'Settlement Terms Code' field is only applicable to those Customers who have credit accounts with your business. It is the field that you use to set the credit terms that you are prepared to offer the Customer.

Note: Settlement Terms also apply to your dealings with Suppliers. If you have a credit account with a Supplier, they will offer certain terms of settlement, which you enter using the Business Information tab of the Supplier Maintain program. Click here for details.

Examples of typical settlement terms are Cash with Order, Cash on Delivery, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, etc.

You can select from the settlement terms that already exist on the system by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the field and using the drop-down list that appears.

You can also create new settlement terms from this screen. To do this, click on the plus (+) button to the right of the 'Settlement Terms Code' field, and the following screen will appear:

Use the first field to enter a description by which the Settlement Terms Code will be known on the system, and recognised by users of the system (up to 15 characters).

The next field allows you to specify whether the settlement terms that you are offering will start from the End of the Month, or from the date that the Invoice was Created.

Choosing the 'End of the Month' option, a Customer with 30 day settlement terms buying goods on the 15th of the month would actually be given more than 30 days in which to pay, because their terms would start from the end of the month in which the invoice was created. Using the 'Invoice Creation Date' option, the same Customer would have exactly 30 days in which to pay, starting on the very day that the goods were purchased.

The next field is where you specify the number of days that make up the settlement terms. This is were you enter the 7, 30, 60 days, etc. of credit that the Customer is

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given.

Discounts

The final two fields deal with discounts that you may choose to offer for prompt payment of invoices. There is no obligation to do this, though if you choose not to offer a discount, you must enter a zero in each of the final two fields in order to proceed.

The first discount-related field allows you to set the number of days that apply to the discount, and this is completely configurable by the user. This effectively means that you can choose to offer a discount if the Customer pays on time; or a discount as an

incentive if the Customer pays more promptly than their settlement terms dictate.

The next field is where you specify the discount that the Customer will receive if they pay within the time period specified in the 'Days Discount Valid' field. The discount is

entered as a percentage of the total invoice value.

Once you are satisfied that all the details you have entered in the settlement terms setup screen are correct, click on the 'OK' button at the bottom of the screen. This has the effect of entering your new settlement terms description into the field, and adding it to the drop-down list for future use.

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12.1.6 Sales Analysis

The Sales Analysis tab of the Customer Maintain screen allows you to analyse the sales data relating to a particular Customer. It works in exactly the same way to the Stock Maintain Sales Analysis tab.

Choose the Customer you require by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the 'Customer' field and selecting from the drop-down list that appears.

If your system is Multi-Locational, click here for further details.

Once you have selected the Customer that you are interested in, you need to configure the Sales Analysis program to give the results that you are looking for.

Start and Finish Dates

Choose a time period (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly) by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the first field in the 'Analysis Parameters' section, then selecting from the drop-down list that appears.

Click on the 'From' check box, and a small box will appear prompting you to select the date that you want the analysis to start from. It is possible to select the start date using ISO Week Numbers or actual Dates - simply choose the method which best suits the way that you work, and the data you are looking for.

The principle of both of these boxes is the same. Clicking on the down arrows to the right of any of the fields will cause a drop-down list to appear. From here you can select from the available options. Once your selection is complete, click on the 'OK' button.

Your selection will appear in the 'From' field of the main screen.

Follow exactly the same process for the 'To' field - this will specify the date that you want the analysis to end. Again, clicking 'OK will make your selection appear in the 'To' field of the main screen.

Note: if you choose not to specify start and finish dates for the analysis that you are about to perform, the system will analyse all the data it has. This will take substantially longer than it will if you have searched between specific dates.

Checking the 'WkNo' box changes date values in the 'From' and 'To' fields into ISO Week Number values. Unchecking the box will change them back to normal date values

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again. Using Week Numbers will enable you to perform your Customer Sales Analysis by Year, Week and Day. Using normal date values will enable you to perform it by Year, Quarter, Month and Day.

Local

The 'Local' check box only applies to Multi-Locational systems. Click here for further details.

If you have a single site then the data that you are analysing will obviously be local, because you do not have other Branches.

Analysing

This completes the process of configuring the system to perform a Sales Analysis for that particular Customer. All that remains is to click on the 'Analyse' button. A progress meter will appear giving you an estimation of how long it will take to assemble the data you have asked for. The greater the time period specified, the longer this process will take.

Eventually, the table at the bottom of the screen should display the Sales Analysis details that you are interested in.

Within this table, you can break down your data even further by clicking on the grey tabs that form the left hand side of the table. In the example above, you could see the data for each individual week by clicking on the relevant tab.

You will notice that once the table has displayed data, the buttons above it are activated.

These buttons allow you to arrange the table either Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly.

Note: when using ISO Week Numbers, the system will allow you to view the data according to Year, Week and Day. When using Normal dates, the system will allow you to view the data according to Year, Quarter, Month and Day. This is because you can divide a year up evenly into either months or weeks, but you cannot divide a month

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evenly into weeks. Therefore, not all of these buttons will be applicable to the way that your data is sorted.

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