Complete customer tracking is included as an integral part of the CounterPoint Base System. Each customer may be set up with user-defined profile information.
Complete customer sales history is available in detail or monthly summary form. The Receivables Option adds charge sales, receivables tracking, revolving charge, and statement printing to the Customers application.
A customer may be defined as a business or an individual. Customers may be set up using standard maintenance functions, or on-the-fly while using Point of Sale or Order Entry.
Basic customer information includes name, address, email address, and up to two contact names and phone numbers. A customer may be assigned to a specific user-defined category to determine the appropriate price level for that customer, or to group that customer with other similar customers for reporting and analysis.
Customers are identified by customer numbers of up to 12 characters in length. Customer numbers may be manually entered or assigned automatically. When a new customer is added, much of the basic information is copied from a user-defined template customer to reduce errors and speed up the entry process.
Customers may be retrieved using a variety of lookup methods: customer number, company name, telephone number, ZIP code, customer card, sales rep, email address, or just a portion of the first or last name.
Unlimited pages of notes may be retained, viewed and printed for a customer. If desired, a specially identified page of notes can be automatically displayed whenever the customer is accessed in Point of Sale or Order Entry.
Customer profiles allow you to build a valuable database of the key customer features you want to track to assist you in analysis and marketing. Up to 15 user-defined profile fields may be tracked for a customer, such as birthday, weight, shoe size, membership status, etc.
Each user-defined profile field is set up to only allow certain types of information. For example, birthday would only allow date entries between a specified range of dates, weight would only allow numeric entries between a specified range of values, etc. In addition, you may set up user-defined profile codes to ensure that (for example) membership status is selected from a list of valid user-defined values.
Each customer may have a responsible sales rep assigned. Point of Sale and Order Entry may be configured to allow crediting of a different sales rep for an individual sale to the customer.
Customers may have multi-level tax codes assigned that indicate special tax rates or taxing authorities. If applicable, the customer's tax exemption number is retained by the system.
For states that do not use conventional arithmetic to calculate sales tax, CounterPoint allows you to enter a table of taxes that apply to the penny portion of the sale tax.
Each customer may have a preferred shipping method. A customer may also have a default ship-to address that is different from the primary address, and/or a number of alternate ship-to addresses. Each shipping address may have its own tax code, preferred shipping method, and specific ship-to notes that can be printed on invoices.
If you want to send promotional mailings to a group of customers, you can use CounterPoint's Generate Email Address List utility to create a list of customer email addresses (which you can then copy and paste into your email software). This utility provides a variety of selection criteria, including customer number, customer category, profile fields, and last sale date. These criteria allow you to tailor each email address file to fit the desired demographic profile. You can also select customers based on total sales--for either the current year or the previous year--or loyalty point balances. You can even examine historical sales to only select customers who purchased certain products during a specific time period.
Customers may be set up as A/R charge (with the Receivables Option), or as non-charge (cash). If you don't wish to keep individualized records on certain purchasers (such as walk-in customers), one or more miscellaneous cash customers may be set up.
Credit limits ensure that customers do not exceed management's guidelines for open credit. In addition, individual customers may be prevented from making charge sales, payments by check, any kind of sale, or even from placing orders.
A credit card and expiration date may be retained for a customer, and may be retrieved automatically when paying for a purchase.
Account Management provides a single-menu selection from which you can perform a number of valuable customer service and credit management functions. For example, after identifying the customer, you can view customer information, notes, credit information, aging, open and closed items, and ticket history.
You can attach notes to the customer that will automatically display in Account Management functions. You can print a statement for the displayed customer.
Customer listings are available, organized by number or name, to show basic customer information, notes, and historical purchases. Customers may be included in reports based on their categories or their profiles.
Labels can print user-defined customer labels. Labels may be printed for all customers, or only for certain customer categories or profiles. Customer mailing labels may also be printed for customers who purchased certain merchandise within a selected time period. The ability to print selected groups of labels is useful for conducting targeted promotions to specific groups of customers.
A multi-year monthly summary is available for each customer, showing sales, cost, profitability, commissions, payments, finance charges, number of sales, and average sale amounts. Monthly summaries may be graphed, viewed, or printed.
A complete detailed history may be obtained for a customer, showing every line item sold or summarizing individual categories of merchandise. Historical information is available using the Sales History application.
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