Organization Entry and Management Best Practices

Best Practice General Overview

Refer to the Best Practice Guides Category page for more information on ABIS Best Practices.

This guide covers the Adjutant best practices for adding and maintaining Organizations including customers and vendors. Many of the settings, procedures, and features detailed in this guide focus on data integrity, which is the most critical task in maintaining the address book that drives your business.

Best Practice Setup Considerations

Setup Options

The following Setup Options are recommended to support good data integrity practices, and are defaulted as enabled for all new implementations:

ENTREQ1 – Requires that each organization is added/saved with address data that includes Address1, City, State, Zip Code, and a ten-digit phone number. Users will not be allowed to save an organization with any of the key details left blank. This will not prevent users from entering inaccurate data, so procedures should be established to regularly review new organizations, or control who has access to create new organizations.

ENTOP1 – Users will receive a warning that states ‘Email Address not filled out’ when adding a new organization where the email field is left blank. Adjutant has robust email features that make capturing a valid email address critical for all organizations.

SHIPTOREQ1 – Requires that each Ship To organization added using the Ship To Quick Add (Plus Button) from the Sales Order or Quote screens includes a contact name, contact phone, and contact email. Users will not be allowed to create Ship To records with blank critical contact information.

SOREQSHIPADDR – Requires that each Ship To record added on a Sales Order contains Address1, City, State, and Zip Code before saving the order. This option closes any loopholes in data entry or data import with Ship To records that got created without address details and prevents orders getting fulfilled without a valid shipping location.

LOOKUPSHOWMASTER – Organizations that are established as a Sold To or a Sold From parent organization are highlighted in green in various search results. This helps distinguish the parent organization from related organizations that have the same or similar company names and helps users avoid selecting the wrong record.

The following Setup Options are available and can support good data practices, but are only recommended for customers in certain circumstances:

ENTCOUNTER – This option establishes an alternative organization numbering system that assigns a numeric ID to each new organization where the organization ID is left blank. This overrides the default ID assignment method based on the organization name combined with a numeric value.

SOLDTOREQSP – This option requires that a Salesperson record is established on every Sold To before allowing the record to be saved. This can be useful for operations with defined sales management policies.

SOLDTOREQAM – This option requires that an Account Manager record is established on every Sold To before allowing the record to be saved. This can be useful for operations with defined sales management policies.

Rule Maintenance Setup

Review the Terms of Payment (TERMS) rule to verify that the default terms of payment is either Due Upon Receipt, COD, Cash, or some other non-credit term. Credit terms should only be granted after review and approval, they should not be granted by default.

Attributes/Reports/Forms/Application Setups/Hardware/Other

Take advantage of setting up Distribution Lists inside of Adjutant. The Distribution List setup screen allows users to create custom email lists that can be used for both internal and external email contacts. Distribution Lists can be used in any Adjutant screen with an email function to save time and make sure the right people are kept informed.

Best Practice Procedures/Guidelines

Determine which organization details are important to your operations and develop procedures and policies around organization entry that reinforce responsible data entry. Communicate the required fields and data quality standards to your teams early and reinforce them as needed.

Use security controls to limit access to creating organizations to as few personnel as possible. Data integrity and data quality standards get progressively more difficult to maintain as more users are involved in creating organizations.

Organization attribute screens have security controls as well. Carefully consider which personnel should have access to establish credit terms and controls in the Bill To screen.

Develop a process to review new customers added at least every 30 days. A custom Diamond report with a date filter is the best way to review recent organization adds. Clean up any address or contact details that are incomplete or inaccurate. There is a better chance of maintaining quality data if it is reviewed and corrected on a frequent and consistent basis.

As part of the customer record review process, review credit terms and credit limits for new customers. Adjutant is set to a default credit limit of $500 for approved credit terms. This amount is intended to allow a small initial order to go through, but to provide a limit in cases where the terms may not have been reviewed or approved. Individual credit limits can be updated in the Bill To screen. The company-level default can be changed in CID Maintenance.

A Cash or Walk-In Customer record should be created for processing counter sales for one-time customers or customers that will not need an account for receivable tracking. For quotes and sales orders, the Order # field can used to capture a phone number, and the Customer PO # field can be used to capture the customer name. These fields are searchable and reportable and will allow some level of customer review and management even when a dedicated customer account is not used.

ABIS does not recommend creating unique Ship To records linked to the Cash or Walk-In customer records. This process quickly becomes unmanageable and is highly prone to creating duplicate records.

ABIS recommends creating a customer record for any order that will not be fulfilled on the same day. If there is any need for follow-up or further contact on an order, the customer record will make that much easier.

Best Practice Standard Features

Adjutant automatically warns users when adding new organizations of any potential matches to existing organizations based on the organization name and address details. Maintaining clean data is critical for customer satisfaction and reporting reliability.

The Make Customer button available on the Organization screen is a single click feature that instantly adds the three needed organization attributes to allow the organization to be used as a customer throughout all Adjutant modules. Detailed settings can still be reviewed and updated as needed, but this feature lets users quickly get a new customer’s quote or sales order processed without any bottlenecks.