Customer Maintenance

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FTD Mercury makes maintaining customers easy. If you use house accounts for your customers, after setting up these accounts, the customer billing process is automated (using the Accounts Receivable Billing module). FTD Mercury stores each customer transaction through Order Entry and Point of Sale. Each order, purchase, or payment made at your store may be applied to a customer’s house account. FTD Mercury also stores customer credit card information if your customers use credit cards for purchase.

Default customers such as your cash sales account, credit card accounts, and wire service accounts are also maintained in the customer screens of the program.

Maintaining your customer database in FTD Mercury also helps you with your store’s marketing strategies. If you consistently add customers to the program, you will soon have a complete listing of all your customers and their personal information.

Maintaining your customers is beneficial when preparing mailings; you may use the FTD Mercury marketing templates to merge your customer information into labels, letters, and envelopes. If you have the Mercury Marketing module, you can use your customer information to create direct mail and email marketing campaigns.

Each customer has a store of origin. The store of origin is the store where the customer was first added to the system. When Adding New Customers, you specify the customer’s store of origin. Then you can use FTD Mercury to print reports by store, view order history by store, and generate or print statements by store. FTD Mercury automatically assigns each of your customers a store of origin. If a customer has placed orders at more than one of your stores, then that customer’s store of origin is determined based on the store where that customer’s first sale occurred. If a customer does not have any sales, then that customer is associated with the first store that was created on the system.

How-to Procedures

Adding New Customers

Setting Up House Accounts

House accounts allow customers to run a monthly balance at your store, so they may charge products and services and receive statements. You can use the Mercury Administration to set defaults for house accounts to reduce employee input time and maintain a consistent billing pattern.

Steps for Setting up House Accounts

Viewing Customer Statistics

Customer statistics consist of sale and house account histories. Information such as a customer’s average sale, current balance, year-to-date sales and sales by occasion type are displayed (for sales processed in the Order Entry, Point of Sale, and Accounts Receivable modules). These statistics provide an overall glimpse of this customer’s buying patterns so you may gear your marketing to those patterns.

Steps for Viewing Customer Statistics

Maintaining Credit Card Information

You use the Credit Card Tab of the Customer Detail Information window to maintain credit card information for a customer in your store’s database. Each credit card the customer has used in Order Entry and Point of Sale is listed, along with the name on the card, its type, account number, and expiration date. This tab can be used to add and remove credit card information.

Steps for Maintaining Credit Cards

Searching for Customers

If you want to view or change customer information, such as house account information, marketing permission, the customer’s address, the customer’s phone number, or standing orders associated with the customer, you must first perform a customer search.

Steps for Searching for Customers

Viewing a Customer's Order History

FTD Mercury allows you to access a customer’s history of orders, charges, and payments (in the Order Entry, Point of Sale, and Accounts Receivable modules).

Steps for Viewing a Customer's Order History

Adding Customer Contacts

At some point, you may want to add the names of additional people (contacts) that may charge to a customer’s house account. For example, you may want to add employee names if this customer is a business, or add family members’ names if this customer is an individual.

NOTE: Names that you type into the Ordered By field in Order Entry or Point of Sale are automatically added to this list.

Steps for Adding Customer Contacts

Window Descriptions

Customer Search Window

The Customer Search window allows you to locate customers in your customer database. You can search by several criteria, and FTD Mercury displays the matching customers based on the criteria. Once you have entered your search criteria, click Search to perform the search.

Customer Search Window Areas

Customer Information Detail Window

The Customer Detail Information window is the central method of accessing customer information in FTD Mercury. The tasks you can perform from this window include:

The Customer Detail Information window consists of the following tabs, each of which contains important information about the customer account:

General Tab

The General tab of the Customer Detail Information window is used to add and update general customer information in your computer’s database. When adding a new customer, you must first complete this tab before setting up a house account.

General Tab Areas

House Account Tab

The House Account tab in the Customer Detail Information window allows you to set up a house account for customers and view house account information. Defaults for house accounts are configured in Mercury Administration.

House Account Tab Areas

Statistics Tab

The Statistics tab of the Customer Detail Information window includes valuable statistical information for the customer. These statistics provide an overall glimpse of this customer’s buying patterns so you may gear your marketing to those patterns. It also includes the house account standings for the customer. The statistics displayed are automatically generated by FTD Mercury and cannot be modified manually. You can find the following information on this tab:

The average amount of each sale the customer made
The total balance due on the customer’s house account
The number of days late the customer is on their house account
How many orders the customer placed last year, and the total value of the orders
How many orders the customer has placed so far this year, and the total value of the orders
The average dollar amount of sales, broken down by occasion
Aging information for the customer’s balances

Credit Cards Tab

This tab displays the credit cards that this customer has used to pay for items in your shop. For each credit card, this tab displays:

Name on card
Type (credit card type)
Account number (credit card number)
Expiration date

When a customer uses a credit card for purchase, this information is automatically stored in this tab.

You may want to limit employee access to this window. To do so, you should modify employee access in Mercury Administration.

Contacts Tab

The Contacts tab in the Customer Detail Information window allows you to add names of other people with permission to charge to this account. For example, you may want to store employee or department names in this tab if the customer is a business, or family member names if the customer is an individual.

You can also remove recipients for a customer. When you remove a recipient, it no longer is displayed as an option in Order Entry or Point of Sale in the Customer list.

When you are finished making changes to this tab (after adding, editing, or removing customer contacts), click Save to save your changes.

Order History Tab

The Order History tab in the Customer Detail Information window displays previous orders that the customer has placed at your store. By default, orders from all stores display. You can filter a customer’s order history by store by selecting the store from the Store Name list.

This window also displays payment history. Dollar amounts in the Total column enclosed in parentheses indicate credits to an account (customer payments or credit memos), whereas dollar amounts not enclosed indicate debits to an account (orders or debit memos). If you double-click on an order, you can view detailed information about that order.

Order History Tab Areas

Marketing Tab

The Marketing tab of the Customer Detail Information window allows you to set up marketing information for each of your customers. Setting up this information will help you better market to your customers; for example, you can print reports and generate letters for specific types of customers (by account type, age group, birthday month, etc.).

If this window appears blank (there aren’t any categories or user questions listed), then you should first go into the Mercury Administration program to create your categories and questions. Both these options are set up in the Accounting folder in Mercury Administration. Marketing categories are set up in the Marketing screen, and user questions are set up in the Questions screen.

Statement Tab

The Statement tab allows you to view statements that have been generated for the customer. You can also re-fax, re-email, and re-print a statement from this window or generate a new statement. From this window, you can:

Click the View button to view detail for the highlighted statement.
Click the Output Statement button to print/fax/e-mail the highlighted statement.
Click Print Statement List to print all statements for the customer.
Click New Statement to generate a new statement for the customer.

Click Customer in the FTD Mercury Main Menu and perform a Customer Search to open the Customer Detail Information window already set up for this customer. Then, click the Statement tab.

Standing Order Tab

The Standing Order Tab in the Customer Detail Information window allows you to perform the following tasks:

View existing standing order templates associated with a customer
Print a list of standing order templates associated with a customer
Create a new standing order template
Edit an existing standing order template
Deleting an upcoming order based on a standing order template
Remove all upcoming orders based on a standing order template
Delete an existing standing order template

Standing Order Tab Areas

Customer Merge Window

The Customer Merge window allows you to locate customers via a customer search, designate the master account, and then select the accounts to merge into the master account.

Customer Merge Window Areas

Purge Customers Window

The Purge Customers window allows you to delete inactive customers from your system. To purge customers, you specify the number of months of inactivity (the number of months since the customer has made a purchase). Purged customers will be permanently deleted from your system, however the data for all purged customers will be stored in a customer account called “Purged Customer.” The data is stored in this account so that it can still be used for reporting purposes.

You can access the Purge Customers window from the Tools menu in FTD Mercury.

Customer Credit Card Window

The Customer Credit Card window opens when you click Add in the Credit Cards tab of the Customer Detail Information Window. It allows you to add a customer’s credit card information to FTD Mercury, allowing your customers to quickly and efficiently charge orders on this credit card for future orders.

Customer Credit Card Window Areas

Standing Order Scheduler Window

The Standing Order Scheduler window opens when you create a new standing order template or edit an existing one. You can configure the schedule for the standing order template (and, therefore, the schedule for when orders are generated from the template) from this window. After setting schedule information, you must click Save prior to entering order information. Once you click Save, if you click Next, you are taken to the Order Entry screen, from which you can configure product and delivery information.

Standing Order Scheduler Window Areas

Customer Marketing

The Marketing tab allows you assign marketing categories to your customers. Marketing categories help you market to your customers more efficiently. For example, you may want to send marketing letters to customers with a birthday in February, or send a list of specials to your business accounts.

You have the opportunity to specify certain marketing categories when printing mailing labels, occasion code letters, and all types of customer lists. This way you do not have to print customer information for all customers; you can specify customers that only fall into certain marketing categories. This section teaches you how to assign marketing categories to your customers.

NOTE: Marketing categories are set up in Mercury Administration.

For a new customer, in FTD Mercury click New Customer in the File menu. Once you enter information into the General tab, click the Marketing tab. For an established customer, click Customer Search in the Main Menu and perform a Customer Search to open the Customer Detail Information window already set up for this customer. Then, click the Marketing tab.

From this tab you can select category types for the customer. To select a category type, click in the Type column for the category and a drop down menu appears. Click your selection from the drop down menu.

If you set up user questions in the Mercury Administration program, answer the user questions for the customer by clicking inside of the Answer columns and typing the customer’s response.

When you are finished selecting categories for the customer, click Save to save your changes.

Wedding Accounts

Wedding accounts can be easily handled in Order Entry by first setting up a wedding house account for the customer, then charging the wedding arrangements to the house account. The customer can then make payments as needed.

NOTE: You do not maintain this account like a regular house account. Because the customer will most likely be making several payments over a span of months, you do not want to print statements for the customer or charge finance charges.

Steps for Creating a Wedding Account/Charging Products to Account

Steps for Receiving Payments on Wedding Accounts

Customer Merge

Over time you may have multiple customer accounts that are actually for the same customer. This can occur if you migrated from another floral management system, or if you created a different account because you could not find the original account for a customer. Regardless, FTD Mercury provides you a way to merge multiple customer accounts into a single account using the Merge Customer utility.

Merging duplicate customer accounts provides the following benefits:

Single billing statements for customers.
Customers only receive one copy of marketing materials for marketing campaigns.
Combined customer purchase history.

Customer Merge is, by default, limited to users who are the Administrator employee type. You can change this from the Window Access screen in Mercury Administration.

When you merge customer accounts, notes, credit card information, phone numbers, contacts, recipients, and standing order information will be merged into the Master Account (if the Master Account does not already have this information).

Steps for Merging Customers

Customer Purge

The Purge Customers utility allows you to delete inactive customers from your system. To purge customers, you specify the number of months of inactivity (the number of months since the customer has made a purchase).

Customers must meet the following criteria before they can be purged:

The customer account cannot have the Do Not Purge check box checked in the Customer

Detail Information window.

The customer account cannot have a balance.
The customer account cannot have an unpaid ticket.
The customer account cannot be a default pay type account (such as “cash”) or a wire service account.
The customer account cannot have a sale with a Pending status.
The customer cannot have an active standing order template.

Purge Customers permanently deletes customers from your system, however the data for all purged customers is stored in a customer account named “Purged Customer.” The data is stored in this account so that it can still be used for reporting purposes.

The Purged Customer account:

is not associated with a store.
is an “inactive” account.
does not have a house account number.
can be viewed, but cannot be changed or deleted.
does not print on reports.

Steps for Purging Customers

Steps for Protecting Customers from Customer Purge

Steps for Deleting Individual Customers

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