7. Customers and Orders
Customer
Customer is the entity for which Invoices are generated and from whom Payments are received. Managing customers by creating new customers and editing existing customers is straightforward.
The Customer here is a company and the Contact is the person within the company.
Quick guide to create a Customer
Login to your portal as an Admin.
On the navigation bar scroll over Customers>> Create new Customer
Fig 4.0 shows the navigational path for Creating a customer
The below screen opens up
Fig 4.1 shows the fields for Creating a customer
The fields marked by * are compulsory fields.
Enter First Name, Last Name and Primary Email (required fields).
The email id entered in the Primary Email field is the email id to which the mails will be sent from the system.
The Login (required field) auto populates to what’s entered in the Primary Email field. This can be over-ridden to any input of your preference.
Account Number is automatically populated in serial i.e. 1001,1002….etc
Enter a Password (required field) of your choice and Confirm Password (required field). The password has to be of a minimum 8 char in length and must consist of 1 capital letter, 1 number (special chars are also allowed)
At this point you can either Save or enter further details about the customer
Click on Show Address to fill the address details
Fig 4.2 shows the path to store the address of a customer
For Advanced Options, please refer Create a Customer section
Fig 4.3 shows the customer profile after a customer is created
Note: Not all the fields are mandatory. A customer can be created just by entering only the compulsory fields.
For a B2C customer, the mandatory Company Name field can be removed by changing the profile settings in System>>Customer Care>>Customer Settings
Exercise 2 – Create a sample Customer relevant to your organization. [5 minutes]
Orders
An order is an association between a Plan and a Customer; it indicates that the Customer wishes to subscribe to a particular subscription Plan and provides the terms around it such as the start and end dates, the quantities involved, etc. The Order is a one-time act, and the resulting invoices generated are periodic occurrences resulting from the Order.
One customer may purchase more than one Plan by placing multiple Orders (for example a customer may buy a voice plan and a separate data plan in the case of a telecom provider). Each Order is associated with exactly one Plan.
Quick guide to create an Order:
Search the customer by Name, Account Number, Email or Address
Fig 4.4 shows the customer search
On the customer profile click New Order
Fig 4.5 shows the New Order button
Choose the applicable plan for your customer to create an Order
Fig 4.6 shows the Order dropdown
The charges will get populated automatically on selection as below
Fig 4.7 shows the Charges details
The Charge C1, C2 and ST are the Charges setup in Plans & Charges and you can check the configuration or make changes by clicking on it.
On clicking Save, the order will get generated
On clicking Save and Pay, the Order and Invoice will get generated.
Exercise 3 – Create a sample Order using the customer from the previous exercise relevant to your organization. [2-3 minutes]