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Application Considerations - Customer Information

Article Number: 1846 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 4:47 PM

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Application Considerations - Customer Information

You must create (if not yet existing) an account for each XML customer (i.e. trading partner) in your sales ledger system. The details of each account must also be transferred to the XML lookup database via the XML maintenance routines.

It is probable that XML orders placed on you are for delivery to locations other than customer head office locations. In these cases each customer will give you a list of their locations and the codes — which may or may not be to EAN standards — that they use for each location. These locations must also exist as delivery addresses in your sales ledger accounts system or, if you keep your delivery addresses in a separate database, then in that database.† These details must also be transferred to the XML lookup database via the XML maintenance routines.

Customer Departments

Some customers request that XML messages such as invoices and credit notes are sent to specific departments within their organisation, usually by quoting a different supplier code within the electronic order messages they send you. The standard way to handle this is to let the XML system do it for you, by returning the same supplier code within invoices generated by their orders.

† If you use a separate delivery address file, then the set-up of your XML system will need to be modified slightly to take account of this fact.

Another method, which requires that the XML system be changed to work in this way, is to treat each department as though a different customer. The benefit of this approach is that you know who to go to when chasing invoices. The downsides are, however, that you must duplicate all the location codes for each customer department, and you must sum all the customer accounts to get a full picture of the customer’s indebtedness to you.

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