Business Account Identifiers

In MYOB Acumatica, business accounts are used to store information related to customers, vendors, and employees, as well as similar information about your organization's companies and branches (this information is used on outgoing documents). MYOB Acumatica gives you flexibility in configuring identifiers for these business accounts, as described in this article. If needed, you can use similar but distinct identifiers for customers, vendors, and employees.

The same business can be both your customer and your vendor, with a separate identifier for each capacity. Also, customers and vendors can be organized into a hierarchy that reflects their actual business relationships.

Creation of Objects with Identifiers Based on Segmented Keys

After you have configured the segmented key and populated its segments, you can create objects with identifiers based on this key on forms that are designed for managing the objects. For example, you use the Subaccounts (GL203000) form to create subaccounts. If the Allow Adding New Values On the Fly check box is selected for the segmented key, users can create the objects when they are filling in data entry forms.

When you create an object identifier defined by a segmented key with multiple segments, you see the input mask (for example, ––/–/–––, where the slash is a segment separator) that shows the number of segments and the length of each segment.

You can configure the system to make sure that users create correct identifiers by selecting the Validate check box for each segment of the key on the Segmented Keys (CS202000) form. With this check box selected, users can enter the identifier that consists of only existing segment values that have been created on the Segment Values (CS203000) form.

If you clear the Validate check box for a segment, users can create an identifier that contains new segment values. In this case, the system validates the new segment values only in accordance with the segment definition: the type of the string and its length. The system does not copy the new segment values that users enter on the fly to the Segment Values form. If needed, you can add these values manually to the list of segment values.

Note: For objects with identifiers that support hierarchical structure (such as inventory item classes), the system does not perform validation of segments controlled by the Validate check box because you enter segment values for these objects on a form used for managing the objects (such as the Item Classes (IN201000) form).

Defining Identifiers for Business Accounts

You can decide upon and configure the rules for creating business account identifiers during system deployment. The BIZACCT segmented key, which you define by using the Segmented Keys (CS202000) form, is used for configuring the general structure of identifiers for business accounts, including accounts for your companies and branches. This structure includes the overall identifier length, the number of segments, and the type of segments.

Before you configure the key, consider the information you would like to include in company, branch, vendor, customer, and employee IDs. Make such decisions as how many segments the identifiers will have, whether auto-numbering should be used for one of the segments, and whether values for each segment should be validated. (These options are described in more detail in Segmented Identifiers.) You also need to decide whether to use the BIZACCT segmented key directly for companies, branches, vendors, customers, and employees or to configure separate keys based on BIZACCT, as the following sections describe.

Tip: If you plan to use integrated credit card processing, you need to make sure that the length of customer identifiers that you are going to set up is accepted by the processing center you use. For example, in Authorize.Net the maximum length of Customer ID is 20 characters.

If you are going to set up a customer record for which you plan to save a large number of credit cards, you will need to set up a customer name of 17 characters or shorter. This is required because when the limit of payment profiles per customer profile, which is defined by the processing center, is reached, an additional customer profile is generated in the processing center and the numbering takes at least 3 characters.

For details on setting up integrated card processing, see Integration with Authorize.Net Through the API Plug-in.

Once you have defined all needed segmented keys, you use the Segment Values (CS203000) form to enter the valid values for segments that should be validated.

Using BIZACCT Directly for Companies, Branches, Vendors, Customers, and Employees

Once you have configured the BIZACCT segmented key, it can be used by default for company, branch, vendor, customer, and employee identifiers. However, in this case, if you turn on auto-numbering for BIZACCT, entities of different types (such as companies, vendors, or employees) will not be easy to distinguish by their identifiers.

Configuring Separate Identifiers for Companies, Branches, Vendors, Customers, and Employees

If you want these types of identifiers to look different at a glance, use the Segmented Keys (CS202000) form to configure the COMPANY, BRANCH, VENDOR, CUSTOMER, and EMPLOYEE segmented keys, all of which inherit their structure (number of segments, segment types, and overall length) from the BIZACCT key. If BIZACCT has an auto-numbered segment, consider using different prefixes for numbering sequences for each type of identifier.

Note:

For the COMPANY, BRANCH, CUSTOMER, VENDOR, and EMPLOYEE segmented keys, you can configure only limited differences, such as different sets of values for validated segments, or different prefixes for the auto-numbering sequences if one of the segments in the BIZACCT key was configured as an auto-numbered segment.

Using Parent Accounts

In MYOB Acumatica, your company's customers and vendors can be organized into hierarchies with parent and child companies to reflect the relations among the companies while allowing you to preserve each as a separate entity in the system, if needed. Any of your vendors or customers can be a parent of another vendor or customer. When you create a vendor or customer business account, you can select the ID of its parent in the Parent Account list on the Vendors (AP303000) or Customers (AR303000) form. On either form, this list includes all vendor and customer identifiers based on the BIZACCT segmented key, so that you can pick the appropriate vendor or customer as a parent.

On some forms, users can select objects of different types from the same lookup list. For example, when preparing time cards, employees can select in the same box either a project or a contract on which they spent their work hours. To make this possible, identifiers of these objects should have similar structures. The structure that should be common for multiple segmented keys, is defined in the parent segmented key. Segmented keys for object identifiers that should have similar structure are called child keys and inherit their structure from the parent key. That is, the child key has the same number of segments as the parent key, and all its segments have the same lengths as the respective segments of the parent key.

By default, the child key has the same structure as the parent key, and the segment values specified for the parent key are available for identifiers based on the child key. However, you can make identifiers based on a child key distinguishable at a glance from identifiers based on the parent key in the following ways:

  • For an alphanumeric segment, you can enter different sets of values for the parent and child key segments.
  • For an auto-numbered segment, you can assign numbering sequences with different properties—for example, with different prefixes.

In the example of time cards mentioned in the beginning of the section, the CONTRACT segmented key inherits its structure from the PROJECT segmented key. For overview of other keys with inheritance relations, see Business Account Identifiers.