Customer Screen

The Customer Screen is where you add a customer to the Manager database, delete a customer from the database, or edit a customer's attributes. This is the panel that will be displayed first when you create a new Estimate, Repair Order, or Invoice. You also can enter the Customer Screen through the Customer Screen selection from the Utilities menu.

Note: Normally, you will enter new customers into the Manager database while you are in the process of creating orders. Access the Customer screen via the Utilities menu when you need to enter/edit groups of customers, as when you are entering your existing customers as part of your initial Manager setup.

The Customer Screen allows you to add or delete a customer or to edit an existing customer's details. It works in conjunction with the Vehicle Screen so that when a customer is added, you can easily switch over to the Vehicle tab to add vehicles to this customer record. Since customer entry was covered in a seperate help topic, here’s an overview of the other functions found here:

• Company - Brings up the Customer List with Company names instead of Customer names. Start typing or click on any letter on the left to display any company names that begin with that letter. Highlight the one you want and click OK to return to Customer Screen with Company details filled in.
• Name - Brings up the Customer List with the Customer display selected. Start typing a name or click on any letter to display customer names. Highlight name and select OK.
• Telephone - Opens the Telephone List where you can select which numbers appear on your Customer Screen as well as above the 5 tabs when this person has an order open.
• E-mail – address used to send an estimate or order to the customer.
• Remarks – Space to add confidential details; contents DOES NOT print anywhere.
• Birthday – field provided for entry of customer’s birthday.
• Referred by - Select referral source for how they become a customer in the database. Watch the Marketing / Referral clip for more information.
• Membership # - field is designed for AAA account #s or similar to ID the customer.

Customer Snapshot at-a-glance information about this customer including:

• Total expenditures by customer, total number of invoices for this customer, average invoice value for this customer, average visits by customer per year, date of the last customer service at your facility and whether to include customer in any followup marketing activity.
• Payment Status - provides visibility to Customer record # in the database, dollar amount owed on posted invoices, if they had some form of overpayment (a deposit or credit), Year-to-date sales, Indication if the customer is approved to charge, indication if the customer is current or past due and if customer is exempt from late fee assessment.
• Vehicle Grid - provides space to view and select customer's vehicles. As you add new vehicles on the Vehicle screen, the rows of this grid are filled in.
• Change Customer – Provided to select a different customer and vehicle to substitute for the current combination assigned to this order.
• Tax - Allows you to overwrite the shop default tax rate for this particular customer. Note: If you change the customer tax setting later, after the initial entry, please remember to ALSO update the tax status for the vehicles under this customer name accordingly.
• Type - This should almost always reflect the default retail figures used in the business. If in the course of adding a new customer, you know all future work should use different pricing, make those changes here and now, so that the program will automatically apply them to all future work.
• Update Customer Status Button- Opens the Update Customer Status dialog box in which you to allows you to update charge, credit and sales information for a customer.
• Set Flag Button - Allows you to Flag a customer with a custom message. Any Flag text set will show up when creating a new Repair Order.

For details, see also...

• Add a New Customer for details on how to add a new customer record.
• Customer/Vehicle Type List  for instructions on how to set labor rates and taxes for the customer.
• Thumb Tabs which dynamically alter your display so that you can view or input different types of information.
• Buttons  Customer which bring up additional, related, dialog boxes.
• Customer Screen Fieldsinto which you can enter and edit customer information, and status boxes in which you can view credit and vehicle information.