Customer discounts

[idan]

I’m new to the use of Manager and notice there has been discussions on customer discounts previously but nothing within the last 6 months. I’m looking at using Manager to assist with managing memberships at our local community garden. We need to be able to apply a discount to membership based on a custom field in the customer record. Is this possible and if so how?

[Tut]

No, it is not possible without manual intervention. Custom fields cannot be linked into any calculation for the simple reason that the program has no way of knowing what you might put in there.

Without knowing what exactly you are trying to do, I can only guess at suggestions. But you might be able to simplify things by defining non-inventory items. Suppose you have three levels of membership. Definie three different non-inventory items, such as (1) Basic, (2) Deluxe, and (3) Golden Trowel. Mark them as “This item can be sold.” Define different prices. Now you can invoice someone easily by choosing their level of membership as a line item. If membership rates rise, edit the non-inventory item. See the Guide:

Create non-inventory items

Non-inventory items are shortcuts for entering line items in many sales- and purchase-related transaction forms in Manager. They are completely optional. Unlike inventory items, they are not required for any transaction entry. But once defined, they help: Standardize terminology by always referring to a product or service with identical language Improve accounting accuracy by always posting similar income or expense items to the same accounts Store and apply consistent prices to commonly sold …

Once you have the first sales invoice created for a member, set up a recurring sales invoice. Now you will be reminded when their membership is due and don’t even have to worry about what their level is. See this Guide:

Creating recurring invoices for customers

If your business issues regular invoices to customers, you can set them up as recurring sales invoices under Settings tab using Recurring Sales Invoices screen. [image] Creating recurring sales invoice To create new recurring sales invoice, go to Settings tab. [image] Click Recurring Sales Invoices. [image] Click New Recurring Sales Invoice button. [image] Enter Next issue date. [image] Select Interval how often new sales invoice should be created from this recurring sales invoice. […

[idan]

Thanks for that. I’ll look into the non-inventory side of things.

[Tut]

@idan, I should warn you about one thing. If you use both the non-inventory item and recurring sales invoice methods I described in my earlier post, you should be aware that editing the price the non-inventory item affects only future use of the item. Past sales invoices (or other forms) containing it will not be modified. That is a good thing.

But one consequence of this fact is that recurring sales invoices that use it will also not be updated with the new price for the non-inventory item, because they have already been defined and are only waiting to be issued when the due dates come around. So each recurring sales invoice will also need to be edited.

One possible way to handle this is to delete the unit price for the line item on the recurring sales invoice template. You will still be reminded to create the invoice, but the price will come up blank. All you have to do is edit and fill in the current membership price for that member’s level when subsequent invoices are generated. The rest of the description, account allocations, etc., will still be there.