Koala Software:

FIND_CUSTOMER

OVERVIEW:

Finding customers is one of the most frequently used functions of LocPlus. This feature is designed to be a powerful, flexible tool for helping your find a customer. There are many features which are worth understanding so that you can get the most of your software. Still basic functions are fairly intuitive, so don't be overwhelmed!

Customer may be searched by contact name (person's name), company name, customer phone number, customer fax number, contact email address, customer city, customer state, or customer country. Various combinations of information may be searched. For example, you can lookup all of your customers in AKRON, OHIO by using both the city and state fields.

There are a number of Look up orders ('Look up by:') that can be selected, and when you select the lookup order, that determines which fields from which you can limit selection. For example, when you Look up by fax number you can only enter the fax number but when you look up by contact name, you can restrict matches by first name, last name, city, and state.

Finnally, you can save your preference for lookup options. For example, if you will be looking up frequently by phone number, then you may set up that as your default lookup. If you will be using company name most frequently, that can be your default.

FIELD INFORMATION:

Top section (in pink):

Look up by:
Select an option for the type of search you want to perform. This will also be the sort order of the results that are returned. For example, if you select 'Contact name', the results will be ordered by the persons last name, then first name.

Customer matches that are displayed will be limited to those with information that matches all of the 'filter fields'. Each 'Look up by:' will have a different set of 'filter fields'. The 'Contact name' look up has 'filter fields' for Last name, First name, City, and State.

Company / Last Name / First Name / City / State / Country / Phone number Fax number / Email address fields:
Put in information for the customer you want to find. It is only necessary to put in enough information so that there are relatively few matching companies. Putting in excessive information not only takes more of your time, but makes it more likely that some data entry discrepancy will cause LocPlus to not be able to find the company for which you are searching.

Search fields like city and state require exact matches for every character entered. For example, searching for a city of 'LOS ANG' will match a customer with a city of 'Los Angelos' but not 'Losangelos'. The space is required for a match.

Company name, phone number, and fax number are different. They don't require character by character matching. Only standard alpha or numeric characters are examined. Therefore if you search for 'A. B. MAC', LocPlus will find 'A & B Machinery', or 'ABM-Acrobats, Inc.'. Save yourself some time and don't bother putting in punctuation!!! Similarly, with phone numbers if you enter '248374' LocPlus will find customers with the phone numbers '(248) 374-0510' or '24 - (83) 741-22' (Perhaps a foriegn number).

Search Now button:
After making selections for 'Look up by:' and other various look up fields (like company name) you must press this button to request the matching customers from LocPlus MLS. Matching customers will be displayed in a list on the bottom portion of the window. Double-clicking on any of the matching customers will display that companies record.

BUTTON: 'Done':
Pressing 'Done' will pull up the customer record for the customer that is highlighted in the list at the bottom of window. You may double-click on the customer line or select the customer by clicking once and then press the 'Done' button.

BUTTON: 'Cancel':
Exits and closes window with no further action.

BUTTON: 'Clear info':
Clears information from all search fields. They are all set to blank. This is available for convienience.

BUTTON: 'Print report':
Displays a list of reports available. Reports will include only the customer results from your query. Only the customers in the list at the bottom of this window will be included, even if the query is limited by number of number of records searched.

BUTTON: 'New customer':
Opens up the customer window in Add Customer mode. If you can't find a customer, then you are going to have to add them to your system!

General tab (tan section):

Select 'ACTIVE' customers only:
Customers returned will be limited to companies with the 'Active' field selected.

List only one line per company (without contact name):
If you look for 'ACME TOOL OF MICHIGAN' and that company has 5 contact people assigned to that company, then each of the contacts is displayed. That will return a total of 5 lines. If you would prefer that only one line be displayed for the company - a more consises list, then mark this checkbox.

Include only customers with the following codes:
If you check this box, then LocPlus will return the names of customers that not only meet all of the filters discussed above, but have also been assigned at least one of the the customer codes marked in the following list.

Misc tab (tan section):

Max # of records to find:
If LocPlus finds too many matching records, it will stop. This is to ensure reasonable performance. LocPlus will not return more than this number of customers. Increasing this number will slow LocPlus performance. (100 is a good number)

Save Lookup information:
Incomplete.

View last lookup upon entry:
If this box is checked, you will see the results of your last search when you initiate a new search. This can save time if your are looking for a company, but have to look in many records.

BUTTON: 'Update default options for XXXX':
Pressing this button will save these lookup options. They will only affect your current user login. If you logged into LocPlus under the name 'JOHN' it will not affect any other users. Next time you search for a company the same 'Look up by:' and other checkbox options will be selected just like they were when you pressed this button.

SUMMARY:

A powerful tool if you know how to use it.