Linking Contacts with Customers and Vendors

Contacts are linked to Customers (and/or Vendors) via so-called Business Relations. For details on how business relations work, please refer to this part of the Microsoft documentation.

Fact boxes for transactions and documents

In the contact overview and card, there are two fact boxes that represent the sales history of the contact. The fact box Sell-to Sales History refers to all transactions in which the contact is included as a sales recipient (i.e. the one to whom, for example, the order was sold). The fact box Bill-to Sales History shows all transactions in which the contact is included as invoice recipient. Clicking on the respective tiles will open the records behind them.
While the info box regarding the invoice recipient can only refer to the transactions of the linked Customer, there are two special features regarding the sales recipient:

• The tiles for the Open Tasks and the Open Sales Opportunities show the transactions by their respective contacts.
• Since a business relations between the contact and a customer is not necessary for a quote, but may exist, there is a case distinction regarding the filter.
  • If there is a Business Relation to a Customer, the tile for the company contact will show all offers of the company, the tile for the person contact will show only the offers for this person. The offers are filtered based on the related Customer No. (via the Sell-to Customer No. field).
    
  • If there is no Business Relation to a customer, the tile always shows only the offers of the respective contact. In this case, the offers are filtered based on Sell-to Contact No..

In the customer overview and card, there is only the fact box that shows the sales history of the sales recipient.

Creation of Sales Quotes without a customer

To create a quote to a prospective customer, it is not necessary to create him as a customer in Financial Accounting at this stage. For this purpose, a contact is sufficient, which is used together with a suitable customer template. Only when converting a sales quote into a sales order, the Business Relation to a customer is mandatory required in the contact.
The customer template contains all the necessary information, such as Business and Gen. Prod. Posting Groups, payment terms, but also information on tax, which are necessary for the creation of an offer. These specifications are stored in the customer templates, which can also be opened via the search (Alt+Q). Here also different sample templates for other countries/regions, currencies or area codes etc. can be deposited for selection. The template that suits a prospect can thus be quickly selected when creating quotes as well as when creating a customer based on a contact.

Document Sending Profiles

Via Batch Sending Documents it is controlled whether the settings defined at the customer are used for batch sending of posted documents or whether the standard dialog is displayed. For the default setting Use customer's setup no dialog is displayed.