Customer Branch??

Hello Joe,

Our business really doesn’t need the customer branch; it is a unnecessary extra step. Can I configure FA to stop requiring the Customer Branch?

Hello,

  When you create a new customer, you must at least create one customer branch. This is necessary in existing framework. Anyway, to automate it, you may edit the file at

   vi sales/manage/customers.php

   under the function handle_submit(&$selected_id)
   
  else
    {     //it is a new customer

        begin_transaction();
        add_customer($_POST['CustName'], $_POST['cust_ref'], $_POST['address'],
            $_POST['tax_id'], $_POST['curr_code'], $_POST['dimension_id'], $_POST['dimension2_id'],
            $_POST['credit_status'], $_POST['payment_terms'], input_num('discount') / 100, input_num('pymt_discount') / 100,
            input_num('credit_limit'), $_POST['sales_type'], $_POST['notes']);

        $selected_id = db_insert_id();
               
        add_branch($selected_id, $_POST['CustName'], $_POST['cust_ref'],
                $_POST['address'], '1', '1', '1', get_company_pref('default_sales_act'),
                get_company_pref('default_sales_discount_act'), get_company_pref('debtors_act'), get_company_pref('default_prompt_payment_act'),
                'DEF', $_POST['address'], 0, '1','1', $_POST['notes']);

 
Please Note:

   This is just my opinion, some parameters are hardcoded to show you the sample. maybe there are better ways to solved your issue. if you try this piece of code, it will work but you need to cater for update function too. The others area you should look into is how it create the contact for this customer.

  Cheers,

  tclim

The actual way of automatically create a branch from an existing customer (via add or edit customer in the new customer form) seems to work pretty well , isn't it ?
I understand though it's a pain to have to do it for every single customers.

We have decided to add six fields from the branch when creating a new customer, so we can create a default branch.
This branch can of course be edited later. The HG repository is updated. This change will go to the next minor release.

/Joe

Sorry Joe, I missed this on my initial reading of this thread so my last post is obsolete.

I think the only fields required would be these (what are the other two?)
Phone Number:   
Secondary Phone Number:   
Fax Number:   
E-mail:

Perhaps you could add some conditional code that only shows these extra fields and does the auto adds to the branch and contact tables if a flag like AutoCreateBranch is set. For this release, this flag might be able to live in the config file and migrate to the Company setup table on the next major release.

While working on this, adding a link to customer maintenance page from the Transaction maintenance screens and a drill down on the customer maintenance table to the transactions would be two very useful additions to the application.

One question RodW.
What do you mean with a drill down on the Customer Maintenance to the transactions. Isn't a link just sufficient?

/Joe

Joe I may be missing something (still on 2.3.4 - gotta catch up ) but as all of these currently get a default value when a branch is added anyway so there is no need to add them to the customer record is there? Aren't we just over complicating things?

Perhaps if AutoAddBranch is enabled all you would need to do is to display a status message that says something like:
"Branch has been automatically created and some fields contain default data, please check default Branch values on this link here"

Finally, on the subject of links, these screens
  Sales Quotation Entry
  Sales Order Entry
  Direct Delivery
  Direct Tax Invoice

Need a link that says Add or Edit beside the Customer and Branch fields which take you back to the appropriate maintenance screen. This would let a user quickly maintain the customer record in the middle of a transaction which is also a sorely lacking feature in FA that most competing systems would support.

I think you'd tick a lot of boxes with these suggested features implemented in a subsequent release.

Damnn, I just realised that these links might need to respect security settings (eg. They should not be displayed if the user does not have appropriate rights!) I'll leave that as an exercise for the dev team

Thanks Joe, I will check the Exclusive Theme after I upgrade to current version. The Install Themes hangs on my system (2.3.4). Nothing opens.

x 2 but I still can't maintain the Themes, Languages, Extensions and Charts of Accounts in Setup after upgrading to 2.3.7. Any ideas what to look for?