The Company form is the backbone of the system... storing all customer and/or dealer information.

Overview
Company data is the heart of all other departments and lets you add unlimited Contacts and Contact Notes to store everything you need to know about the people you do business with.

The CRM Department has multiple tabs on the page:

• Company

• All Contacts

• Sales Territories

• LetterWriter / Company Logo & Header Info

The Company Tab

The Company form has these special features:

1. Click to open Sales/Orders, create a new Quote with this Company information already entered.

2. Click to open Sales/Orders, filtered to display ONLY this Company's Quotes & Orders.

3. Enter the domain name used for this Company's email accounts. This field should store the default Company email domain name in this format:  @domainName.com.  This field supports two very important functions:  The first is that it supplies the default address for new contacts that you add when you click the "New" button on the Contacts toolbar; all you have to do is enter the person's name in front of the @domainName.com text, which eliminates typos in email addresses.  The second is to assist the 'Import from Outlook' function (click here for details) by matching the selected email(s) address with this field value so that you don't have to manually select which company to link to the imported the contact note.

4. The Reference Code value is used to rate each Company. Think of this value like it's a 'Dealer Class' or credit rating value. You can add new codes by clicking the green (+) button.

5. Check 'Shipping Address' if this is the physical address of this company. Check the 'Billing Address' if this is also the Billing address for this company. If not, choose the Billing company from the drop-down list.

6. Choose what type of company this is by checking one or more of the 'Type' or classifications on the first tab.

7. Setup the color coding for display the companies by classification in the Navigator by choosing the classification from the drop-down list, then clicking the color wheel button to assign a color to it.

8. The Primary contact can be added here or by clicking the 'Primary Contact' button on the Contacts dialog. If you enter a contact here that is NOT in Contacts, a new Contacts record will be created and you'll be prompted to fill in additional information for this person.

9. You can double-click on any email hyperlink to open Outlook and start a new mail message to the address.

10. Check this option to include this person as someone who you would send mass emailing to. See the Action Menu help files for more information in automating mass emails.

11. Every record in each Department/Page has these fields: Last Editor and Last Edit Date, which are updated each time a record is saved. This denotes who edited it and when.

12. The Create Date is the date/time stamp for whent this record was created. This gives you a timeline for when the Company record was added and helps you determine how long before the first Order was created for each Company (using reports).

13. This field is on every record and is checked by default. When unchecked, this Company record will no longer appear in any drop-down lists in the rest of the system. This allows you to remove a company so no more orders can be created for it, but doesn't remove the information from the database.

14. The Company Type, Lead Generator and Finance Term drop-down lists are all User Values, which can be added by clicking the green (+) buttons next to each field.    The Finance Terms value is copied to Sales/Quotes so it can be printed on the Quote or Order.

15. The Discount Rates fields are also passed to the Sales/Orders form when a Quote is created.

16. The Freight Distance value is also passed to the Sales/Orders form when a Quote is created.  This is used to pick up the Freight charges (from the Freight Chart tab in Sales).  You can enter this distance manually, if you know it, or you can click the 'Distance' button to have SalesPro estimate the distance based on the Company's Zip Code.  NOTE that this is not accurate to the mile, as distances between zip codes are calculated to/from the centers of each zip code areas.

17. The Sales Tax Rates are also copied to a new Sales/Quote and are pulled automatically from the Tax Rates table in Administration when saving the Company record, based on the 'State' value

18. This option should only be checked on YOUR company record.  This is used to calculate the Freight Distance values (above) by automatically supplying YOUR company zip code as the 'start' location as well as other calculations in the system.

The 'Streets & Trips' tab manages the integration between the Company information and Microsoft Streets & Trips.

This utility allows you to use the Company filtering features to drill down to just the Company locations you want to map in Streets & Trips, export the data, and then import it into a Streets & Trips map.

Click the Help (?) button for details about using this utility. Please note you must have one of the versions of Microsoft Streets and Trips installed on your computer for this to work.
 

The Custom tab holds six customizable fields; two are drop-down lists, three are simple text fields, and the last one is a memo field.

This feature is used to add fields that are not already included in the Company form, but may be information that YOUR company needs to track.

A System Administrator can change the field names and assign formulas to these fields to pull data from other Department tables, if necessary. Click here to view the Help topic for specific instructions on setting up these custom fields.


 

The All Contacts Tab

Contacts are added for each Company by clicking on the "New" button on the Contacts DataGrid toolbar (see Contacts help).  The "All Contacts" tab displays ALL Contacts in the database from all company records.

Sales Territories

The Sales Territories page has an image control where you can attach a map of how your sales territories are organized.  Add Territory Names by entering new values in the Territory drop-down list (this is one of the few drop-down lists in the system that you can type in).  Then you select a Sales Person (which is a list of all users in Security) to manage the Territory. 

The map is helpful when adding a new Company and deciding which territory the Company is in.  You can add a map by clicking the 'Browse' button and choosing a bitmap (.bmp), jpeg (.jpg) or gif (.gif) file.

Since Territories MAY be used for additional Security (see the Advanced Security topic) editing a Territory name automatically updates the name in the Company and Orders records. 

LetterWriter & Company Logo/Header Info

LetterWriter is a simple word processor that uses the Company and Contact information to create form letters, also called Mail Merges, that stores its data in the current database.  This means that all documents are shared by all users of the system, since they're simply records in the database and not separate word processing files on someone's computer.

Click here to view the full topic on LetterWriter.

The Company Logo & Header information tab stores your company logo, name, address and other info that you want to use in documents like letters.  Adding the information here, then using the Mail Merge fields to mark where to print it, makes it easy to update your company information without having to go through each LetterWriter document to change it.

It also provides all users in the system a copy of your company logo that can be copied by clicking the "Copy to Clipboard" button, and then pasted into other documents (choose Edit, Paste from the application's menu, or simply use Ctrl+V to paste it).

The Company Logo & Header information can be added automatically to LetterWriter documents by using the Mail Merge fields shown below:

This same page is included in the Report Designer department, as reports can use placeholder fields to automatically display the logo and information when printing.  Editing the logo and data on either page updates both.