Customers

Customers are companies or other organisations that buy your products. Customers are found under customers in the main menu. Foreign customers have a guide of their own: Export customers.

In the customer list you can search for customers by any customer detail, filter the list by customer group and sort it by newest or by name. An export customer's name is followed by the destination country, and a customer under a sales ban by the mark Sales ban. From the list's ⋯ menu you get the customer register as an Excel file (download customer data as Excel) and reach Valvira's licence holder register (browse alcohol licence register).

Creating a new customer

1. Press create new customer in the customer list.
2. Enter the customer's Name. As you type, BrewOS suggests licence holders found in Valvira's licence register. Selecting a suggestion fills in the name, Business ID and address.
3. If you give the Business ID, BrewOS fetches the company's name and postal address from YTJ. If no details are found, the form tells you so. The cause may be a temporary disruption in YTJ, or the company may be a partnership whose details the YTJ interface does not provide.
4. Complete the Email address and Postal address if needed.
5. Press Add customer.

The form also checks the Business ID against Valvira's licence register. If no alcohol licence in force is found for the Business ID, the form warns that the customer has no alcohol licence or that its licence is not in force. The warning does not prevent creating the customer, because you can also sell the customer products other than alcoholic beverages. Check the licence situation before you sell alcoholic beverages to the customer.

A customer can also be created from Valvira's licence holder register: choose browse alcohol licence register from the customer list's ⋯ menu, search for the licence holder and press Create customer on its row. The new customer form opens with the name and Business ID filled in. Check the details and press Add customer.

Customer details

The top of the customer's Home tab shows the Customer number, i.e. the identifier assigned by BrewOS. If the customer has been transferred to an invoicing system, its identifier is also shown here. On the tab you can edit the following details and save them with the button Save changes:

• Name
• Business ID: the form checks the ID's format and warns if a customer with the same Business ID already exists.
• Customer group (see below)
• Account manager: the user on your account who is responsible for the customer.
• Contact person and Contact phone. The form warns about an invalid phone number.
• Email: the form warns about an invalid or non-working address.
• Postal address: C/O, street address, postcode and post town
• E-invoice address and operator. With the button Look up e-invoice address BrewOS looks up the e-invoice addresses found for the customer's Business ID. Clicking an address copies it to the customer's details.
• Document language: the language in which the customer's invoice, shipping documents and other documents sent to the customer are printed.
• E-invoice format (only for accounts using Maventa invoicing): Standard (Finvoice 3.0) or S-ryhmä (S Group). On S Group invoices the delivery location's store number is mandatory.
• Notes: internal notes that are not shown to the customer.

No alcohol licence number is saved for the customer. The licence number is always a detail of the delivery location (see below).

The customer's page has the tabs Home, Delivery locations, Contract price list, Shipments and Invoicing. The Payments tab is shown if the account's invoicing system is Maventa, ProCountor, Netvisor or Fennoa (see Customer invoicing). With the page's buttons you can create a new shipment or a new invoice for the customer. You record a customer return with customer return in the ⋯ menu, see Customer return.

On the Contract price list tab you set the customer's contract prices and the Permanent discount, which is applied to all of the customer's orders unless an order-specific or row-specific discount has been given. See Pricing. From the tab you can also download a sales catalogue with the customer's contract prices (Download sales catalogue), see Sales catalogue.

Delete customer removes the customer from the customer register after confirmation. The customer's earlier shipments and invoices remain in the system.

Sales ban

A customer can be put under a sales ban, for example because of unpaid invoices. No new shipments can be created for a customer under a sales ban: the new shipment button is disabled, and the customer cannot log in to the webshop or order from it. Shipments and invoices already created stay as they are, and an invoice can still be made for the customer.

1. On the customer's Home tab, press set sales ban.
2. If you like, enter a Reason. The reason is shown on the customer's pages and when someone tries to create a shipment for the customer.
3. Press Set sales ban.

The sales ban is shown with its start date at the top of the customer's pages, in the customer list and on the customer's undelivered shipments. Check then whether a shipment created before the ban is to be delivered.

The reason can be changed with the button change sales ban reason, and the ban is lifted with the button Lift sales ban. A sales ban cannot be set or lifted with the sales user role. Setting, changes and lifting are saved in the event log.

Credit rating

A domestic customer's page has the button Check credit rating. The credit information is fetched by the customer's Business ID and is supplied by Bisnode Finland Oy. The check is charged to your account's service credits: the page shows the charge and the current balance before the check. Press Run credit check. Previously fetched information is shown on the page with its retrieval date.

Delivery locations

For shipments, a customer must have at least one delivery location. The details of the same delivery location can be used in many shipments. A delivery location has the following details:

• Delivery location, i.e. the name
• Delivery location alcohol licence no.: the Valvira alcohol licence number of the receiving premises. The number is used in the delivery details reported to Valvira and to the Finnish Tax Administration (Vero). For domestic delivery locations the licence number is mandatory.
• Bonded warehouse no., if the recipient is an authorised warehousekeeper of a bonded warehouse
• Delivery location's standard reference, which is added to shipment documents and invoices as the customer's reference
• Store number: a retail chain's fixed site identifier, needed e.g. on S Group e-invoices
• Address: street address, postcode and post town
• Additional instructions for the driver, such as a door code or the recipient's phone number

An export customer's delivery location is given only a name, an address (also address line 2) and a country, see Export customers.

On the Delivery locations tab you see the customer's delivery locations, most recently used first: the name and additional instructions, the licence number, the address, the bonded warehouse number and the date of the latest shipment. Next to the licence number there is a mark if the alcohol licence has expired (Expired) or is not yet in force (Not yet in force). Clicking a delivery location in the list starts a new shipment to that location.

A new delivery location can be created with the button Create new delivery location. If premises are found in Valvira's licence register for the customer's Business ID, you can choose from them with the button Pick from Valvira data, which fills in the name, licence number and address. Otherwise you can copy the customer's name and address into the fields with the links Use the customer's name and Use the customer's address. Save with the button Create delivery location.

A delivery location is usually entered directly on the new shipment form: the form is prefilled with the customer's previous delivery location, and you can change the details before creating the shipment (see Shipments).

Delivery locations are not edited afterwards. If you change a delivery location's details on the new shipment form or with a shipment's edit link, BrewOS creates a new delivery location from the changed details, even if the change concerns only, for example, the address or the additional instructions. This keeps the exact delivery location of every shipment unchanged in the system.

Webshop password: If the account has a webshop (Settings > Webshops), the Delivery locations list has a Webshop column. The customer logs in to the webshop with the delivery location's alcohol licence number and a password. Press Create password on the delivery location's row and then Create webshop password. The password can be created when the delivery location's licence is found in Valvira's licence register under the customer's Business ID, is in force and is an on-trade, retail or wholesale licence. The password is shown only once, so pass the licence number and password to the customer straight away. An active password can be replaced with a new one (Create new password) or disabled (Disable password). The password works in all of the account's webshops.

Customer groups

Customer groups let you group customers, e.g. on-trade venues and retail shops. The groups are defined under Settings > Customer groups:

1. Enter the new group's name under Create new group and press Add customer group.
2. Clicking a group lets you change its name and Payment terms. Empty payment terms mean that the account's general payment terms are used.

The group list shows the number of customers in each group. Clicking the number opens the list of the group's customers. The Delete button at the end of a row deletes the group immediately without a separate confirmation. The group's customers are left without a group, and the group's customer group prices are removed.

A customer is linked to a group with the Customer group selection on the customer's Home tab. Customer group prices can be set for a group, see Pricing. The customer group is also shown in the customer's shipments.

AI assistant

Customers, delivery locations and customer groups can also be managed through the AI assistant. With the assistant you can, for example, search Valvira's licence holder register and create a customer from the details of a licence holder found there, or put a customer under a sales ban. When the assistant creates a domestic customer, it gives the same licence warning as the new customer form.