Introduction to Dynamics GP – Customer Classes

Welcome! This is the first entry in a series of posts focusing on some of the basic functionality within Microsoft Dynamics GP. This entry will cover the creation, use and advantages of classes.

Stated simply, classes allow various record types, such as customers, venders, items, users, or employees to be grouped together by a certain characteristic. For example, a New York customer class could be setup to group all customers based in New York together. To create a new customer class, browse to Microsoft Dynamics GP >> Tools >> Setup >> Sales >> Customer Class.

Enter a Class ID to identify the customer class, a description, and the properties associated with the class, including payment terms, salesperson, shipping method, and so on. In this example, I am creating a NEW_YORK customer class to group all of my New York-based customers together. Click the Accounts button to open the Accounts Setup window and to assign distribution accounts. Save the class when completed.

Now when creating a new New York customer, all I need to enter is some basic name, address, and phone information, and then assign the NEW_YORK class. The properties entered for the NEW_YORK class are carried over to the customer, including the distribution accounts. If I had to enter ten New York-based customers into Dynamics GP, I’ve just saved myself a lot of time and from a lot of tedious data entry. If there are properties that default from the NEW_YORK class that do not apply to the specific customer, I can still modify the individual customer. 

In the future, if a new salesperson needed to be assigned to all New York customers, I would make the change to the NEW_YORK class. Dynamics GP would then ask if I would like to roll-down the changes to the customer records. Selecting “Yes” will apply that change to every customer record the NEW_YORK class has Again, I’ve avoided a large amount of tedious data entry.

To learn more about the advantages of classes in Microsoft Dynamics GP check out our training video on classes, and for more topics visit our GP training videos page.

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