Understanding Customer Monthly Budgets

Customer Concepts

You use the Customer History Monthly Budgets tab to help you manage customer budgets. If you set up a customer with the appropriate information and the customer's sales go over the allotted budget amount, a warning displays for the order-taker in the Order Entry window (unless you set the For Quotes Ignore Customer Restrictions box to Y in the Order Entry General Configuration Parameters).

The system stores all the budget information for the customer for the current year in the C-BUDGETS file. The C-BUDHIST file stores the budget history information for the customer for the next and last years.

Budget Types

There are three types of budgets you can set up for your customers. You can have a Fixed Monthly Budget, Floating Monthly Budget, or a P/O Budget. You can use P/O budgets to manage a standing budget, such as that of a school district, for example.

Preparing to Use Customer Budgets

If you're going to use the customer budgets feature, you should review two parameters in the (LG5) Additional Order Entry Parameters screen.

Required Authorization Code When Over Credit Limit: You use this parameter to specify whether to prompt for authorization before continuing an order that exceeds the budget amount. If you specify Y, the Authorization Code message displays. You can enter any user-defined authorization code at this message to continue.
Password: You can enter a password to restrict the order-writer from continuing with an order that exceeds the customer's budget amount. If you set a password and an order exceeds the customer's budget amount, the Authorization Code message displays. The order-writer must enter the password before the order can continue. You can enter up to four alphanumeric characters in this field.

For more details concerning these parameters, see In the (LG5) Screen.

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About Customer History