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Areas
Areas are used to classify the geographical location of Companies to any desired degree of precision. The Areas used could thus be LON - London, SE - South East, or could be L1 to L5 - different areas of London. Don't just replicate the postcode areas, because you already have a space for that information. You may wish to categorise areas carefully according to a predefined plan for mailshot purposes, but this is optional, and the list could be built up gradually.
Postcodes/ZIP codes
Once these are set up, together with the associated Areas, entering a Postcode into the Companies screen will cause the Area and any associated default Sales Person to be brought in automatically.
Countries
The importance of setting up Countries is that they are related to the Address Formats (see below). When you enter a company whose address includes a particular Country, any documentation printed by Enterprise 6 will contain an Address in the correct format for that Country.
Status
Status is used to record your relationship with Companies or Contacts, so examples might be PR - Prospect, CL - Client, or SP - Supplier. It is important that you do enter some basic Status records such as those above when first using the system, though the list can be added to at any time.
Usage setup contains the options 'Companies', 'Contacts', 'Applicants', 'Attendees' and 'Diary' because each of those screens has a Status field.
Types
The code for storing Business Types is nine characters long rather than the usual four to allow for greater sophistication. The codes could reflect the Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC), or could be your own invented system, eg DCOMP - Distributor of Computers, SARCH - Architectural Service. Business Types are the sort of list for which you are unlikely to be able to foresee all the requirements initially, and can be built up gradually through use of the system. The Types file is used for several different purposes. For example, it is used at a company level to describe the business Type of that company. It is also used at contact level: ‘Contact Cos’ refers to the Address Type field in the company included list on the contact screen. Each contact can have more than one address (you might have both their home and work numbers, or they might be a freelance worker with whom you have contact at more than one company) and here Type is used to describe each of their addresses (for example, Work Address and Home Address would be valid Types here). The Price group field can be used to allocate a special pricing rate to Companies of this Type.
Sources
This refers to how you came by the company or contact you are typing in, eg AD - Advertising, PC - Personal contact, or CR - Client Referral. Again, it may make sense to build this list gradually. A Source can range from word of mouth through to a single specific advertisement. For word of mouth, most of the fields will obviously be left blank. However, in the case of an advertisement, there is space to record where it was placed, how much it cost, which member of Personnel was in charge and how many leads are expected to be generated. If appropriate, the Product field can be used if the advertisement promoted a single product. If an Order is then entered with a File State with access to the ‘Copy Previous’ function and with this Source, an Order Item of this Product will be created automatically.
The Usage options are ‘Companies’, ‘Contacts’, ‘Attendees’ and ‘Orders’.
Publications
If your company advertises in The LA Times, for instance, this fact should be set up here, so that when an Enquiry from that advertisement is entered, the fact can be recorded. The Publications file is also a look-up file used by the Sources file described above.
Roles
This file is used as a look-up by the Role field on the contacts screen. Store here possible Roles that a contact might have within their company. A Role does not necessarily have to be the same as a Position, so it can be used to highlight contacts that are, for example, Decision Makers, Staff, or financial contacts.
Product Groups
When you come to enter a list of your company's products, you will be categorising them according to a list of group headings specified here. The codes are three characters long. For example, Apple equipment could be ÔGrouped' as COM - Computers, MON - Monitors, PRI - Printers, and perhaps CON - Consumables. In addition to the group Code and Name, specify:
Comments
Any Comments entered here will be printed in the Price List to describe the Products the group contains.
Sales account
The Account Code entered here will be used as a default when entering new Products in this group, and tells the system which nominal ledger Account is to be used for sales of Products in this group. It can be overridden for individual Products. If left blank, the default Account set up for the Sales Invoice Transaction Type will be used instead. Use the @ sign if unsure, to bring up a list of Accounts as created using the Accounts menu item on the Accounts menu (full details of this menu item are to be found in the nominal ledger Setup chapter).
Purchase account
In the same way as for Sales above, this is used to specify the default purchasing nominal ledger Account.
Stock account
When posting Purchase Invoices an option is available to have the amount posted to the relevant Stock Account instead of Cost of Sales, and then to have it subsequently posted out of the Stock Account in to the Cost of Sales Account on shipping (ie when a Delivery-Type Stock Movement is made). This will keep the Profit & Loss free of costs incurred until such time as the goods are sold. If you wish to make use of this option, enter the Account Code of the appropriate Account here. This will be used as a default when entering Products of this group.
Default analysis
If you are using analyses in the nominal ledger for departmental or multi-company accounting, you may want to specify which analysis the Products entered in this group belong to. Use the @ sign if unsure, to bring up a list of analyses as created using the analyses menu item on the Accounts menu (full details of this menu item are to be found in the nominal ledger Setup chapter).
Note that group 0 is set aside for a special task and cannot be part of your group structure.
Brands
Brands are the second classification method for the Products file, referring to the name of their manufacturer. Again, three character codes are used. For example, APP - Apple, MIC - Microsoft, etc.
Price groups
Price groups are part of the Price Matrix companion volume, which enables a complex discount structure to be set up which can be used when entering Orders.
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