About customer locations

When you create a customer account in the Customers (AR303000) window, the system creates the main location for the customer automatically by using all the settings you have specified on the Delivery settings tab. (This is the case whether or not the Business account locations functionality is enabled.) The main location has MAIN as its ID, which cannot be modified.

You can specify that the identifier of the branch the user is currently signed in is used by default as the identifier of the customer’s main location instead of the MAIN location. To do this for all customers of a class, you select the Default location ID from branch check box in the Customer classes (AR201000) window.

Once you create the main location, it is automatically marked as the default location on the Locations tab of the Customers (AR303000) window. If additional locations have been added to the customer account, you can make another location the default location by selecting the location and clicking Set as default in the table toolbar.

When you create a new location, the address and contact information of the main location are used by default, and the general ledger accounts and location settings (the settings grouped under the Location settings section) of the default location are used by default. You can replace any of these settings for the new location. The settings of the default location are used when you create new customer documents, as described in the next section.

When you enter a customer document (that is, an invoice, payment, cash sale, or sales order), you should first select the customer. When you do, certain elements in the window are filled in with the settings associated with the customer's default location.

If you select a location other than the default one, the values will change to those associated with the selected location. The selected location provides default values for the customer's documents: the VAT zone, the shipping instructions, and the sales account and corresponding subaccount. Also, for sales orders, the location provides the shipping address and contact information.

You can override any of the default values. For new invoices and sales orders entered into the system, tax settings are by default those in both the VAT zone of the customer location and the product category associated with the items specified as the document details.

The system creates the resulting list of applicable taxes automatically and shows it on the VAT details tab of Sales invoices (AR301000) or Sales orders (SO301000).

Each customer's location can be also associated with a customer price class, which is used as a condition to be met for discount application. You can specify different customer price classes for different locations to make your pricing policy more flexible.