Customer Group
A Customer Group in ERPNext is a group of customers who have commonalities in their attributes and for whom it becomes convenient to segment, organize, and manage them efficiently. Customer Groups are normally market segments, business domains, or customer type.
Customer Groups in ERPNext (latest version) are hierarchically structured so that you can have a main parent group with several sub-groups under it. This hierarchical structure enhances the reporting, pricing, and performance tracking immensely.
For instance, a parent group named "All Customers" might have sub-groups such as Retail, Wholesale, Government, or Online Customers. In addition, you may also allocate a default Price List, Payment Terms Template, and Credit Limits to a group so that they are automatically used when you set up transactions for any customer in the group.
In addition, ERPNext supports in-depth trend analysis on each customer segment, and identifying high-value segments becomes simpler, on which you can target marketing and sales. ERPNext is pre-configured with Individual, Commercial, and Government groups, but you can modify or extend these as required.
1. Adding a Customer Group
- Go to: "Customer Group" list and Click on "New".
- Choose a parent customer group like *All Customer Groups.
- Click Add Child.
- Type a Customer Group Name.
- Check Group Node if you will have sub-customer groups below it.
- Click Create New then Save.
Tip: If your company doesn't need to segment customers extensively, all your customers can be left under the Default Customer Group. Setting up proper customer group segmentation, however, enables improved reporting, personalized pricing, and segmented marketing.
2. Features
2.1 Credit Limit Default Price List Default Payment Terms Template
You can choose:
- Credit Limit → Automatically restricts up to what level a customer of this category can borrow.
- Default Price List → Accurate pricing without manual choice.
- Payment Terms Template → Enforces payment terms on all customers in the group.
These defaults are automatically used while making sales transactions like Sales Orders or Sales Invoices.
2.2 Default Receivable Account
Rather than setting up a different accounting ledger per customer, ERPNext enables you to allocate a Common Receivable Account for the entire group. This keeps bookkeeping simple while keeping the transactions tidy.
Alternatively, it is still possible to create and relate to each customer his own separate receivable account in the * default Receivable Account setting in his master record.