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Understanding and Using Customers and Jobs

The Customer:Job form is used to setup new customers or to create new jobs for existing customers.  It holds the contact and general information for those specific customers or particular jobs.  To get the most out of Total Office Manager, it is strongly recommended to use Title Case when entering data in the program (see the related topic, “Capitalization and Lettering” for more information).

Customer:Job Form Access

  • From the main menu, click Customers | New Customer:Job
  • From the toolbar, click the New Customer:Job button.

Understanding the Customer:Job Form

Address Info Tab

The Address Info Tab is used to store basic contact information including billing address, work address, phone/fax/cell numbers, email & website addresses, and more.

Contacts Tab

The Contacts Tab is used to record additional contacts related to the customer.  A virtually unlimited number of additional contacts can be stored in the Contacts tab.

Additional Info Tab

The Additional Info Tab is used for other customer information including customer type, invoice terms extended to the customer, sales rep information, original marketing information, sales tax information, options regarding whether or not to assess finance charges or generate statements, control over pop-up notes for the customer, and User Defined Fields.

Payment Info Tab

The Payment Info Tab is used to define which A/R account to use for the customer, define the customer’s account number, setup a credit limit, enter opening A/R balance info, and record preferred payment method information.

Job Info Tab

The Job Info Tab is used to track information on a specific job, typically larger jobs, for an existing customer.  It is central to “job costing” a particular job, because COGS & expenses can be attributed to it. Fields exist to track the job type, foreman, job status, start date, projected end date, job completion date, and projected total.  This is where to select which estimate goes with the job.  If required, a virtually unlimited amount of job details can be entered here.  Additional overhead can even be applied to a particular job (for job costing) from within the Job Info tab.

Form Field & Button Definitions

Certain fields and buttons are always available in the form, regardless of the tab being viewed.  Note that some of the Menu button commands are not available until the form is saved once.

  • Customer Name – The name of the customer is displayed here.  It usually takes on information gathered from the Company Name field (or the Mr./Mrs./…,First Name, M.I., Last Name fields), but it can be edited manually if required.
  • Save & Close – This button saves any information and exits the form.
  • Save & New – This button saves any information, then open a new form ready to be filled in with another customer’s information.
  • Cancel – This button exits the form without saving any information.

Menu Button Commands

  • Menu | Save – Manually saves the form.
  • Menu | Revert – Causes the form to dismiss any changes and return to information contained when last saved.  It is the same as canceling the record without saving changes, then re-opening the record.
  • Menu | Copy – Copies the information of an original customer record into a new form.  It’s useful for your landlord customers or corporate customers, when it might be easier to copy an original record and make a few changes to it, rather than enter all information into a blank form.
  • Menu | Notes – Opens the Notepad for that customer.  A virtually unlimited number of notes about the item can be entered here.
  • Menu | Delete – Permanently deletes the record from the system.  This function may not always be available because of historical transactions in which it may be involved.  Inactivating customers is recommended over deleting customers.
  • Menu | Create | Invoice – Creates a new invoice, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Create | Sale – Creates a new sale, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Create | Credit – Creates a new credit memo, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Create | Estimate – Creates a new estimate, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Create Work Order – Creates a new work order, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Service Agreements – Opens the Add Service Agreement form, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | Create Equipment – Opens the Add Customer Equipment form, pre-populated with the customer’s information.
  • Menu | History – Opens the customer’s history form which displays every sale, check, purchase order, bill, item receipt, service agreement and more, ever involving that specific customer.
  • Menu | Contact Log – Opens the customer’s Contact Log, used to enter detailed notes about the account.
  • Menu | Document Links – Opens the Document Links form for the specific customer.  The form behaves similarly to the company-wide Document Manager, except this view only displays documents related to this particular customer.

Other Controls

  • Inactivate – Check this field if you are no longer doing business with this customer.
  • No Marketing – This is used like a do not call list.  When this checkbox is ticked, the customer will not appear in any Marketing List Generator results.

Tips Related to Customer Jobs

  • After the first save, the Service Agreement status is displayed for the customer.
  • After the first save, the original creator of the form is displayed.  After subsequent saves, the most recent revision of the form, is displayed in addition to the original creator.

Related Content

Tips on Capitalization and Lettering
Customer:Job List
Customer:Job Child Account (sub)
Opening Balances / As Of Fields (customers and vendors)
Preferences – Customer:Jobs
Customer Equipment