How to Create New Customers From a Rental Contract

The Create Rental Contract form lets you add a customer who isn't in Latner yet without leaving the form, so a walk-in or a brand new account can be on hire in one pass.

Overview

Not every hire starts with an account that already exists. Someone rings up, the job starts tomorrow, and the customer has never dealt with you before. Rather than stopping to set them up in the Customers module and coming back, you can create them from inside the contract.

The Customer dropdown on the Create Rental Contract form has a Create New button underneath the search results.
It opens the same Create Customer form you'd use from the Customers module, layered over the contract you're already filling in.
For a business you can look the company up on the Australian Business Register and have the name and ABN filled in for you.
Saving creates the customer, its billing contact and a main site in one go, then selects the new customer on the contract behind it.
The same Create New button appears on the Customer Site and Site Contact fields, and on the Create Rental Quote form.

Before You Begin

Creating a customer from a contract touches two permissions and a handful of settings.

Requirement	Where to Find It
Create Rental Contract permission	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups
Create Customer permission - required for customers on an account (non-COD) payment term	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups
Create Cash (COD) Customer permission - allows cash on delivery customers only	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups
Default Payment Term - the term the new customer starts on	Security › Settings › Customers
Customer Code Generation Method and COD Customer Code Prefix - how the customer code is built	Security › Settings › Customers
Mandatory CRM Account Fields - makes Lead Source and/or Industry compulsory	Security › Settings › Sales
Mandatory Customer Billing Contact Fields - makes Last Name and/or Email compulsory on the contact	Security › Settings › Customers
Lead Sources - the list the Lead Source field draws from	Rental › Configuration › Lead Sources
Industries - the list the Industry field draws from	Sales › Configuration › Industries

The Customer options in a permission group. Create Customer covers account customers, Create Cash (COD) Customer covers cash sales only

The mandatory field settings. Leave them empty and only the fields marked required on the form have to be filled in

The Create New button is not hidden when you lack the permission. If you have neither Create Customer nor Create Cash (COD) Customer, the form still opens and the check happens when you press Save, which fails with "You don't have permission to create/edit Account Customers".

Creating the Customer

Step 1 - Open the Create Rental Contract form

Go to Rental › Rental Contracts and choose Options › Create Rental Contract.

The Rental Contracts screen. Create Rental Contract is the only entry on the Options menu

Click into Customer. The dropdown lists your active customers with their payment terms, and customers on cash on delivery terms are shown in red so you can spot them at a glance. Type the company name first to be sure they really are new - it's much easier than merging duplicates later. When nothing matches, click Create New at the bottom of the list.

The Customer dropdown. Create New sits below the search results, so you can check for an existing account before adding one

Step 3 - Choose the customer type

The Create Customer form opens over the contract. Set Type to Business or Individual - Business shows the ABN Search field, Individual hides it. Branch is already set to your own branch and Payment Term to the Default Payment Term setting.

These fields are required:

Type - Business or Individual.
Customer Name - the trading name the contract and invoices will show.
Branch - the branch that owns the account.
Account Contact - the person invoices go to.
Payment Term - decides whether this is an account or a cash customer.
Address - the billing address.

And these are optional unless a setting makes them compulsory:

ABN - checked for a valid ABN format when you save.
Sales Rep, Phone, Email.
Lead Source and Industry - required when listed in Mandatory CRM Account Fields.

The Create Customer form opens on top of the contract, with Branch and Payment Term already filled in

Step 4 - Look the business up by ABN

For a Business, type the company name or an ABN into ABN Search. Latner queries the Australian Business Register and lists matching entities with their ABN and postcode. Pick the right one and Customer Name and ABN are filled in for you. The search itself isn't saved against the customer, and you can skip it entirely and type the name by hand.

An ABN Search on a company name. Postcode helps you tell related entities apart before you pick one

Step 5 - Enter the account contact and address

Fill in Account Contact with the contact's full name, plus Phone and Email. Latner splits the name on the space, so "Marcus Webb" becomes first name Marcus and last name Webb. Search for the billing address in Address, or use the pencil icon to type one in manually.

Step 6 - Set the payment term, lead source and industry

Payment Term is the field that decides what kind of customer this is. Choosing a cash on delivery term reveals an extra ID Number field for recording the licence or ID you sighted, sets the credit limit to $0.00 and puts the account on Immediate Payment. If Default COD Customer Address to Branch is enabled, the address is prefilled with the branch's address.

Picking a cash on delivery term adds the ID Number field to the bottom row of the form

Step 7 - Save the customer

Check the form over and click Save. Latner generates the customer code, creates the billing contact and a main site, and drops the new customer straight into the Customer field on the contract behind.

The completed Create Customer form, with the name and ABN carried over from the ABN Search

Back on the contract, the new customer is selected and the Customer Site dropdown already holds the automatically created HUTC001_Main site

Step 8 - Finish the rental contract

Pick the main site under Customer Site, or use Create New again to add the real delivery site. Choosing the site fills Site Contact, Phone, Email and Address from the contact you just created. Set the Expected Off Hire Date, add a Purchase Order if you have one, then Save.

The contract form filled from the new customer. Only the off hire date and purchase order had to be typed

The saved rental contract. Ordered By, Site Contact and Billing Contact all point at the contact created with the customer

After Creation

The customer appears under Customers › Customers with status Active and credit status Ok - or Immediate Payment if you chose a cash on delivery term.
The customer code is built by the Customer Code Generation Method setting. The default takes the first four letters of the name and adds a unique number, so Hutchinson Builders becomes HUTC001. COD customers also pick up the COD Customer Code Prefix.
A main site named after the code, such as HUTC001_Main, is created at the billing address on the same branch.
The Account Contact is saved as the customer's billing contact and is also set as the delivery contact, account contact and default reporting contact, and linked to the main site.
The billing address is copied to the delivery and account addresses.
The GST sales tax is applied if your system has one, and the damage waiver falls back to the Global Damage Waiver rental setting.
The credit limit starts at $0.00 until someone sets one on the customer record.

The new customer record. The code, main site, billing contact and GST sales tax were all set by the save

Nothing in this flow runs a credit check or sets a credit limit, so a customer created here starts on a $0.00 limit on your default payment term. Have Accounts review the account before a large or long hire. If you pick the wrong customer on the contract, don't recreate it - use Options › Update Customer on the rental contract, which needs the Update Rental Contract Customer permission.

FAQs

I can see the Create New button, but saving gives me a permission error. Why?

The button isn't hidden when you lack the permission - the check runs when you save. Creating a customer on an account payment term needs Create Customer. If you only hold Create Cash (COD) Customer, you can save cash on delivery customers only. Ask your administrator to review your permission group under Security › Configuration › Permission Groups.

Why is C.O.D the only payment term I can choose?

Because your permission group grants Create Cash (COD) Customer but not Create Customer. In that case the Payment Term list is filtered to cash on delivery terms, and the default term is cleared if it isn't one, so you have to pick a COD term before you can save.

The contact's surname came out wrong. What happened?

Account Contact is a single field that Latner splits on the space: the first word becomes the first name, the second becomes the last name, and anything after that is dropped. For a name like "Mary Anne Fitzgerald Smith" you'll want to fix the contact afterwards under Customers › Customer Contacts.

The customer already exists, but they don't come up in the dropdown. Where are they?

The Customer dropdown only lists accounts with status Active that are already customers. A customer set to Inactive or Pending Approval won't show, and neither will a CRM account that hasn't been converted yet - that takes Convert To Customer on the account. Check Customers › Customers before creating a second record.

Do I have to fill in Lead Source and Industry?

Only if they're listed in the Mandatory CRM Account Fields setting under Security › Settings › Sales. That setting is enforced on the form and again when the customer is saved, so it applies however the customer is created.

Nothing appears when I search ABN Search. Is it broken?

ABN Search only shows for the Business type, and it returns nothing until you type - it searches the Australian Business Register live rather than your own data, and it only returns active ABNs. It's a convenience, not a requirement: type the Customer Name and ABN yourself and save as normal.

Can I create the site and the site contact the same way?

Yes. Customer Site and Site Contact both have their own Create New button, and they arrive prefilled with the customer you've selected. See How to Create New Customer Sites From a Rental Contract for that flow. The same Create New button is also on the Create Rental Quote form.

Where does the new customer's main site come from?

Latner creates it for you so the contract has somewhere to deliver to. It's named after the customer code with _Main on the end, it sits at the billing address on the customer's branch, and it carries the account contact as its site contact. If the equipment is going somewhere else, add the real site with Create New on Customer Site rather than editing the main one.

Watch the Demo

Prefer to watch it? Step through the same flow here.