This topic describes how to delete an account in Customer Maintenance. You should do this after you run your end-of year reports. If you delete accounts at any other time, both the RFR and RSA reports will be affected because they will be missing the information for the deleted accounts.
You may want to delete an account either because it has been inactive for a long time, and you don’ t expect it to become active again, or because it becomes apparent that the account is a bad risk. Keep in mind when you delete an account, you’re also deleting all the sales history that was accumulated for that account. Thus, instead of deleting an account, you can cut off charge privileges until the account is back in good standing. However, for those times where deleting an account is appropriate, use the procedure below.
You can delete an account only when it meets these four conditions:
The account has no outstanding open items.
An "open item" is any transaction that is associated with the account--this includes not only invoices but credits, adjustments, finance charges, late fees, balance forwards, and even payments!
To check an account for open items, use the Transaction Viewer.
If the Running Balance is zero, use the Aging Report (RAG) with option P to purge the transactions. Be sure to specify the specific account number in the From/To Cust Number fields on the RAG. Note that you must apply all A, C, and P transactions for open item accounts before they can be purged. Options 170 and 180 (Past Due Periods Kept After Purge) determine how soon transactions are eligible for purging.
If the Running Balance is not zero, the balance has to be zero before you can delete the account. If there are any bad debts (invoices you expect will never be paid), you will have to write them off.
The account has no associated job accounts (Contractor users only).
Delete all jobs associated with the account, including job 999 which the system created. Note that like the main account, a job account must have NO open items in order to be deleted.
The account has no departmental sales history (AR Pro users only).
The account is not used as a Bill To account for another customer.
You should also make sure there are no open orders on file for an account before you delete it. The system doesn’t automatically check to make sure there are no open orders, as it does for the other four conditions. To print a list of outstanding orders, use the Open Order (ROO) Report.
Open orders and open items are not the same thing. An open order is an on-file point-of-sale transaction: an order, special order, estimate, bid or open quote. An open item is an on-file Accounts Receivable transaction: an invoice, adjustment, credit, balance forward, payment, finance charge or late charge.
Display the customer account you want to delete.
Click Delete.
The message "are you sure you want to delete this customer?” displays. Click Yes.
Depending on the message you received after clicking Yes in the previous step, do one of the following:
If you received the message "Customer Deleted," you have successfully deleted the account, and you can simply close the Customer Maintenance window.
If you received the message "Open Items Still Exist for This Account," click OK to close the message. You must delete open items before you can delete the account. For more information, see the Accounts Receivable Manual (available at www.activant.com), the section entitled "Deleting Accounts."
If you received the message "Customer History Still Exists for This Customer," click OK to close the message. Then delete customer history on the Dept tab so you can delete the account.
If you received the message "May Not Delete a Customer with Jobs," click OK to close the message. Then delete the jobs first, so you can delete the main account. Be sure to delete job account 999 in addition to the other jobs associated with the account.
If you received the message "May not Delete Customer Used as Bill To," this means this account is currently being used as a Bill To account number for one or more of your other customers. You must first remove this account from Bill To field of the other account(s) before you can delete it.