Business Accounts: General Information

As you work with prospective customers, you need to create business accounts in the system, which can later be extended as customer accounts. (They can also be extended as vendor accounts if your company purchases some products or services from the company.)

A business account can be used when you create a new entity, such as a contact or lead, that is related to the account. You can associate a newly created contact or lead with an existing business account so that it becomes a representative of this customer or prospect.

This topic provides information about creating business accounts in MYOB Acumatica.

Learning Objectives

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

• Become familiar with ways of creating business accounts
• Create a business account manually
• Create a business account by using the MYOB Acumatica mobile app
• Specify a primary contact for the business account
• Process a business account as it has different statuses
• Learn about the synchronization of settings in leads, contacts, and business accounts
• Learn about using sales territories for the distribution of business accounts between owners

Applicable Scenarios

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

• An employee of your company has contacted a lead and confirmed the contact information and the interest in company's products or services, and you need to convert the lead to an opportunity.
• You have been assigned as the owner of a contact who is employed by a prospective customer interested in your company's products or services, and you need to create a business account.

Business Accounts in MYOB Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, a business account is a record on the Business Accounts (CR303000) form that represents a legal entity (a company or an individual) that your company deals with or intends to sell products and services to; it is generally created in the system when your company is marketing its products or services to the business account. This business account can later be extended as a customer (or as a vendor; a business account can be extended as both a customer and a vendor if you sell products or services to this account and buy products or services from it).

A lead and a contact (or multiple leads and contacts) in the system—which are created on the Leads (CR301000) form and the Contacts (CR302000) form, respectively—may be associated with a business account. To create a business account, you need to specify a contact for this account. If the needed contact has already been created in the system, you can create a business account and associate the contact with the account. If the needed contact has not been created in the system, the system will create it when you are creating the business account. When you are creating a new business account based on a lead, the system automatically copies the contact information from the lead to the business account.

You can delete a business account that has been created based on a lead. In this case, the lead and contact associated with this business account remain in the system.

Creation of Business Accounts in MYOB Acumatica

The broader process of creating a business account in MYOB Acumatica, which is maintained on the Business Accounts (CR303000) form, consists of the following steps:

1. Optional: If you are creating a business account based on an existing lead, validating this lead for duplicates. For details, see Validating Records for Duplicates.
2. Creating the business account (from a lead, contact, through lead conversion to an opportunity, or manually).
3. Optional: Creating a contact associated with the business account.
4. Specifying a primary contact for the business account.

You can create a business account in any of the following ways:

• On the Leads (CR301000) form when you convert the selected lead to an opportunity by clicking Convert to Opportunity on the More menu. In the Create Opportunity dialog box, which opens, you specify the opportunity and business account settings; the specification of business account settings may be required or optional, depending on the conversion settings on the Lead Classes (CR207000) form for the lead. You then click Create or Create and Review to create the opportunity and business account. For detailed instructions, see Lead Qualification by Sales Teams: To Convert a Lead to an Opportunity.
• On the Leads or Opportunities (CR304000) form if you are creating a business account associated with the selected lead or opportunity by clicking Create Account on the More menu. In the Create Account dialog box, which opens, you specify the basic business account and contact settings, and then you click Create or Create and Review to create the business account.
• On the Contacts (CR302000) form if you are creating a business account associated with the contact selected on the form by clicking Create Account on the More menu. In the Create Account dialog box, which opens, you specify the business account settings and click Create or Create and Review to create the business account.
• Directly on the Business Accounts (CR303000) form. In this case, you add a new record and manually enter the settings of the new business account.
• Directly by using the MYOB mobile app. For detailed instructions, see Business Accounts: To Create a Business Account by Using the MYOB Mobile App.
• By using import scenarios to import lists of business accounts on the Import by Scenario (SM206036) form. You can use the predefined Import Business Accounts from Excel import scenario.

Regardless of how you create the business account, you can select a business account class in the Business Account Class box on the Business Accounts form or in one of the dialog boxes mentioned above, which causes the system to insert default settings for the business account, easing the process of content creation. (For details, see Defining Business Account Classes.)

Assigning Sales Territories to Leads, Contacts, Business Accounts, and Opportunities

A sales territory is a territory that in most cases is determined based on the geographical location of the lead, contact, business account, or opportunity. By using sales territories, you can distribute the lead, contact, business account, and opportunity records between different sales territories and the sales representatives who are responsible for the sales territories.

To configure the sales territory functionality, you need to create each sales territory on the Sales Territories (CS204100) form, which is available if the Customer Management and Sales Territory Management features are enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. You can assign each sales territory one of the following types:

• By Country: A territory made up of a country or multiple countries
• By State: A territory made up of a state or multiple states of the selected country
• Other: Another type of territory that can be assigned only manually

After sales territories have been created on the Sales Territories form, the system automatically assigns a sales territory (excluding territories with the Other territory type) to records during record creation or if a user changes a country, a state, or both of these for an existing record. You can also assign countries and states of a country to an existing sales territory directly on the Countries/States (CS204000) form.

You can see the sales territory to which a record has been assigned on the Additional Info tab of the Leads (CR301000) and Opportunities (CR304000) forms and on the General tab of the Contacts (CR302000) and Business Accounts (CR303000) forms.

You can manually specify a sales territory if the Override Territory check box is selected on the data entry form for a record. In this case, the sales territory is not updated automatically if you change a country, a state, or both of these in the address settings of the record. If another record is created based on this record, the system copies the state of the check box and the selected sales territory to the target record.

You can also use the sales territory ID as a setting on the Conditions tab of the Assignment Maps (EP205010) form, based on which the assignment of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities to owners proceeds in the following cases:

• The creation of new records if the Assignment Map option is selected in the Default Owner box of the appropriate form to define a class of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities
• Mass-assignment of records to owners by using the following mass-processing forms: Assign Leads (CR503010), Assign Contacts (CR503011), Assign Business Accounts (CR503310), and Assign Opportunities (CR503110)

Relations Between a Business Account and Its Associated Records

As you work with a business account in MYOB Acumatica, you can track the records associated with the account on the Relations tab of the Business Accounts (CR303000) form. For details, see Managing Relations.

Processing of a Business Account Through Statuses

As a business account is being processed by a marketing or sales team, it progresses through various statuses. The current status of a business account is displayed in the Customer Status box in the Summary area of the Business Accounts (CR303000) form. You can manually change the status of a business account.

In MYOB Acumatica, a business account may be assigned one of the following statuses:

• Prospect: The business account is a prospective customer that may be interested in signing a deal but has not done this yet.

  This option is available for selection if the business account has the Business Account type.

• Active: The business account is active, appears in all Business Account lookup tables, and can be selected in documents and other records.

  This option is available for selection if the business account has the Customer or Customer & Vendor type.

• On Hold: The business account (and the corresponding customer account, if applicable) is temporarily on hold.

  The business account and the associated customer cannot be selected in documents and other records, and they do not appear in lookup tables for the Business Account and Customer element.

• Inactive: The business account (and the associated customer, if applicable) is inactive. The business account and the associated customer cannot be selected in documents and other records. That is, they do not appear in lookup tables for the Business Account and Customer element. Any existing document or record with an inactive account or the associated customer cannot be processed; any attempt to modify the document or record results in an error.
• One-Time: The business account is for a one-time customer. The account becomes inactive after all the payments have been received.

  This option is available for selection if the business account has the Customer or Customer & Vendor type.

• Credit Hold: The business account has been put on credit hold, which prevents users from creating any new sales orders for the customer: Users cannot select the customer in the Customer box in the Summary area of the Sales Orders (SO301000) form.

  This option is available for selection if the business account has the Customer or Customer & Vendor type.

To mass-change the statuses of multiple business accounts or mass-update their settings, you can use the Update Business Accounts (CR503320) form.

For details about extending a business account to be a customer or vendor, see Business Accounts: Extension of a Business Account as a Customer or Vendor.

Synchronization of Settings in Leads, Contacts, and Business Accounts

The way the system synchronizes these settings depends on:

• Whether the business account associated with the lead and the contact has been extended to be a customer or a vendor
• Whether the Override check box is selected on the General tab of the Leads form

If the Business Account Hasn’t Been Extended

If the business account hasn’t yet been extended to be a customer or a vendor, the records’ contact settings on the Leads, Contacts, and Business Accounts forms are synchronized as follows:

• If the Override check box is cleared for the lead (the default state): Updating the settings of a record on one of the forms causes these settings to be updated on other forms.
  Tip: If the lead’s settings aren’t updated automatically from the Business Accounts form, select and then clear the Override check box on the Leads form.
• If the Override check box is selected for the lead: The settings on the Leads form can differ from these settings on the Contacts and Business Accounts forms; synchronization isn’t performed between the lead, contact, and business account.

If the Business Account Has Been Extended

If the business account associated with the contact and the lead has been extended as a customer or a vendor, the contact settings on the Contacts and Leads forms are read-only. Synchronization occurs in one direction only —from the business account on the Business Accounts form. The settings are synchronized as follows:

• If the Override check box is cleared for the lead (the default state): The address settings on the Contacts and Leads forms are updated automatically when they’re changed on the Business Accounts form. You can override the contact’s address settings on the Contacts form by selecting the Override Address check box on the General tab. Similarly, you can override the lead’s address settings on the Leads form by selecting the Override check box on the General tab.
• If the Override check box is selected for the lead: The contact and address information on the Leads form can differ from the same information of the related contact and business account on the Contacts and Business Accounts forms; synchronization isn’t performed between the related records. If the contact and address information is updated on the Business Accounts form, the changes are not applied to the Leads form.

Ability to Add User-Defined Fields to CRM Forms

User-defined fields are site-specific elements that have been defined to track information deemed as important to the organization. An administrator and customizer—a user with particular access rights in the system—can add user-defined fields to CRM forms such as Leads (CR301000), Contacts (CR302000), and Business Accounts (CR303000) form. For details, see Adjustment of the MYOB Acumatica UI: Managing User-Defined Fields.

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Copying of User-Defined Fields Between Records

While viewing a record on some entry forms, you can create new records—such as CRM records (for example, opportunities or business accounts), project quotes, customers, and vendors—from the original record. If both records have user-defined fields, the system copies each field’s values only if both records have this field defined on their entry forms. For details, see Adjustment of the MYOB Acumatica UI: Managing User-Defined Fields.

The system copies user-defined field values similarly when a user creates a new record by copying the current one, such as:

• A sales quote created by copying an existing one on the Quotes tab of the Opportunities form or by clicking Copy Quote on the More menu of the Sales Quotes form
• A project quote created by clicking Copy on the More menu of the Project Quotes (PM304500) form