Customer categories let you group customers with common terms and settings. All the fields you fill in on a category — payment term, credit limit, financial account, invoicing rules, etc. — are automatically inherited by the customers associated with the category. This simplifies the creation of new customers and ensures consistency across customer groups.
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Customer categories are accessed in Financial via Accounting → Setup → Customer categories.
Customer categories are used across Sapera in the following ways:
When you create or edit a customer, you select which customer category the customer belongs to. The customer then inherits the category's payment term, credit limit, financial account, sales price type, default org. unit and other invoicing rules.
For reminder runs, the category's settings — Interest rate, Suppress reminders and Reminder run account for fee — control whether customers in the category are reminded, and which account the reminder fees are posted to.
For interest runs (the Calculate interest dialog), you can filter by customer category, so interest is only calculated for selected categories.
For SMS and e-mail sending from Accounting, recipients can be filtered by customer category, so communication is targeted at specific customer groups.
In reports, you can filter by customer category, so report data is limited to a specific group of customers.
For invoicing and sales orders, the category's Default org. unit and Default sales price type are used automatically, unless something else is selected manually on the specific transaction.
When you open Customer categories, a list of all created customer categories is shown. From here you can create, edit and delete categories.
You can search and filter in the list. See How to search in lists for more about searching and filtering.
Create new ("+" button): Opens the edit screen for a new category. Always available.
Edit (pencil button): Opens the edit screen for the selected category. Requires a category to be selected in the list. You can also double-click a row to open it for editing.
Delete (trash button): Deletes the selected category after a confirmation dialog. The button is hidden when no category is selected.
Help ("?" button): Opens this help article.
You can customize which columns are shown in the list by clicking the gear icon. The following columns are hidden by default but can be enabled:
Payment term, Credit limit, Currency, Default sales price type, Interest rate and Default org. unit.
If your Sapera installation uses an org. unit hierarchy (chain/store structure), an extra selector is shown in the list that lets you navigate between the levels in the hierarchy. In this case, three additional actions are available:
Use from parent: Inherits the customer category from the parent org. unit level. Available when a category is selected and you are not at the root level.
Use for all levels below: Copies and propagates the selected category down to all subordinate org. units. Available when a category is selected.
Clear defined at current level: Removes the locally defined category and falls back to the inherited definition from the parent level. Available when you are not at the root level.
The edit screen opens when you create a new category or edit an existing one. Here you fill in all field values and can see which customers are associated with the category.
Finish with Save and close to save the changes, or Cancel to leave the screen without saving.
System name: A unique, internal name that identifies the category in the system. The system name must not contain spaces, æøå or special characters — use, for example, `erhvervskunder` or `vip_kunder`. Note: The system name can only be specified at creation and cannot be changed afterwards.
Display name: The user-friendly name of the category, shown in the interface — for example "Business customers" or "VIP customers".
Financial account: Debtor collective account for customers in this category. Overrides the default account set up in the finance setup, if an account is selected here.
Payment term: The payment term that applies to customers in this category, e.g. 30 days net. See payment terms.
Credit limit: The maximum amount customers in this category may buy on credit. The minimum value is 0.
Currency: Invoicing currency for customers in the category, e.g. EUR. The invoice is issued in the selected currency, but on posting the amount is converted to local currency. See currencies.
Reminder run account for fee: The financial account on which reminder fees are posted during a reminder run for customers in this category.
Default sales price type: The sales price type that is automatically suggested for invoicing and sales orders for customers in the category. Used, for example, to control whether loyalty customers are invoiced at special prices.
Default org. unit: The org. unit that is automatically selected when creating an invoice and sales order for customers in the category. Since the org. unit is part of the product category setup, you can use this to control which accounts sales, stock outflow, etc. are posted to for specific customer groups.
Interest rate: The interest rate used in interest runs for customers in this category. The minimum value is 0.
Without VAT: If checked, customers in this category are invoiced without VAT.
Support EAN invoicing: If checked, customers in the category can receive EAN invoices.
Support e-mail sending in general: If checked, customers in the category support general e-mail sending from the system.
Support printout: If checked, customers in the category support printout in general.
Support invoice printout: If checked, customers in the category specifically support printout of invoices.
Support e-mail invoicing: If checked, customers in the category support invoicing via e-mail. Note the distinction: this field specifically covers e-mail invoicing, while "Support e-mail sending in general" covers all general e-mail communication.
Use cost price: If checked, customers in this category are invoiced at cost price.
Is customer reference required: If checked, customer reference is mandatory on the invoice for customers in the category. Relevant for EAN invoicing.
Is contact person required: If checked, contact person is mandatory on the invoice. Relevant for EAN invoicing.
Is requisitioner required: If checked, requisitioner is mandatory on the invoice. Relevant for EAN invoicing.
Suppress reminders: If checked, customers in this category are not reminded during reminder runs.
Force mass invoicing for sales orders: If checked, the use of mass invoicing is forced for sales orders associated with customers in the category.
Note: These settings can be overridden for the individual customer.
At the bottom of the edit screen you find the tab Customers. This tab shows a list of all customers currently associated with the customer category in question.
On the left, an org. unit tree is shown, so you can filter the customer list to a specific store or department. On the right, a grid is shown with columns for Identifier and Display name.
The tab provides a quick overview of the category's current usage across org. units.
If you have questions, you are welcome to contact support.
Want to know more?
Read more in these related articles:
Customer categories
In this guide we will go through how to create customer categories in Sapera.
Create a customer category
This article explains how to create customer categories to easily manage default settings such as discounts, currency and VAT codes for selected customer groups.
Supplier setup
This article explains how to access and change supplier setup for a specific supplier
