Business Account Classes: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can group business accounts into classes based on specific characteristics. The use of business account classes may help you quickly and effectively manage your marketing and sales processes, including the creation of business accounts, the creation of opportunities and customers, and the preparation of financial reports.

This topic provides information about business account classes.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Create a business account class
  • Select the business account class that the system will use by default for each new business account

Applicable Scenarios

You may want to learn how to create business account classes in scenarios that include the following:

  • You need to give users the ability to group business accounts that represent companies of the same industry, such as banks, supermarkets, or pharmacies.
  • You need to give users the ability to group business accounts that represent companies of the same business sector, such as manufacturers, merchandisers, or service providers.
  • You need to set up the system to automatically assign new business accounts to the appropriate owners.

Business Account Classes

In MYOB Advanced, you can group business accounts into classes and gather different sets of additional information about the accounts in each business account class. You can define classes on the Business Account Classes (CR208000) form based on your company’s business needs. Business account classes help you quickly assign business accounts to owners, define a default email account for sending emails to business accounts, and specify predefined mailing settings, which are used for sending electronic versions of documents (by email) to companies represented by business accounts.

A business account class is a grouping entity for business accounts that share at least one common characteristic. Business account classes are used for reporting purposes and for providing default values during data entry of individual business accounts. When a user creates a business account, the user can first select the applicable business account class, which causes the system to use the values of the class as default values for the business account. The system also loads any attributes—UI elements that you can configure, specifying their names, control types (check box, text box, or combo box), and possible values (for boxes with predefined options)—that you have defined for the class, so that the user can enter these values for the business account.

Business account classes also make the creation of business accounts faster and more accurate. When a user is creating a business account on the Business Accounts (CR303000) form and selects a business account class on the Summary area, the system fills in the values specified for the class; these default values can be overridden.

For each business account class, you can define a set of attributes that allow users to specify additional information about business accounts within the class. An attribute is a characteristic or quality—such as industry, number of employees, or company revenue—that is important to your company but is not already tracked on the Business Accounts form. When a user selects a business account class for a new business account, the attributes of this class appear on the Attributes tab of the Business Accounts form as additional elements for which the user selects the appropriate values. For more information about the use of attributes in MYOB Advanced, see Attributes.

On the General tab of the Customer Management Preferences (CR101000) form (Data Entry Settings section) you can specify the default business account class that the system will insert for each business account that you create in the system. Specifying this default class may be useful if a particular business account class is used far more than the others. If you select a default business account class, when a user creates a business account by using the Business Accounts form, the system inserts this class into the Class box of the Summary area, and inserts the default settings associated with the business account class. If the user changes the default business account class, the system inserts the default settings specified for the newly selected class.

On the Business Account Classes form, you can specify the following settings for each business account class:

  • The identifier and description of the business account class.
  • The way the system determines the default owner of a business account of the business account class, which can be the user who creates the business account, a user determined through an assignment map, or an owner inherited from the source entity if the business account is created from another entity.
  • The map to be used for the automatic assignment of a business account of the class during creation of the business account if the default owner is determined through the assignment map.
  • The default email account that can be used for sending emails to the business accounts of the class.
  • The attributes that are listed as additional elements for business accounts of this business account class. If you specify a value for a particular attribute of a business account and then extend this business account as a customer or vendor account, the specified attribute value is not copied to the customer or vendor unless the selected customer or vendor class has the same attribute. If it does and an attribute value has been specified for the business account , the system copies the value of the attribute to the customer or vendor. The attributes of the business account (and their values, if specified) are preserved on the Business Accounts form.

    If the customer or vendor class has attributes specified, these attributes are listed for the customer or vendor. Thus, the sets of attributes for a business account and for the customer or vendor to which the business account has been extended can be different, depending on the settings of each class.

  • Mailing settings, which are specified on the Mailing & Printing tab of the form and used for sending electronic versions of documents (by email) to companies represented by business accounts and to employees of your company who are overseeing operations with business accounts of the class. For details, see Managing Mailings.