Chapter 5 — Partners

Module code: PARTNERS (also written partners) Features: partner_view, partner_config Home: /partners/

5.1 What the module is for

A partner is any organisation or person your business deals with: a customer, a vendor, a contact person at either, a donor, a parent. There is one partner record per organisation or person, and every other module points at it.

This matters more than it sounds. Because Sales, Purchase, Accounting, Project Management and the School fee system all read the same partner record, a change of address is made once and is correct everywhere. Two records for the same customer is the single most damaging data problem in the system: statements split, credit limits mislead, and the aged receivable report shows the customer twice.

5.2 Who uses it

5.3 Screens

/partners/                          dashboard
/partners/all/                      full partner list
/partners/create/                   new partner
/partners/<id>/edit/                open a partner (the detail view redirects here)
/partners/<id>/archive/             archive a partner
/partners/config/                   configuration hub

Configuration screens, all reached from /partners/config/:

/partners/config/type/create/       partner types
/partners/config/tag/create/        tags
/partners/config/industry/create/   industries
/partners/config/teams/create/      sales teams

5.4 Setup before first use

Do this once, before importing or entering partners.

1. Partner types

Screen: /partners/config/ → Types

A partner type classifies the relationship: Customer, Vendor, Donor, Parent, Employee-contact. Types drive numbering and filtering.

1. Select Create type.
2. Enter the name and a short code.
3. Save.

2. Number ranges and prefixes

Each type can carry a prefix and a number range so partners are given a reference automatically — CUST-000145, VEND-000032. Set this up before creating partners; retro-numbering existing records is manual work.

3. Industries

Screen: /partners/config/ → Industries

Optional but useful for sales reporting. Create the industries you actually segment by, not an exhaustive list.

4. Tags

Screen: /partners/config/ → Tags

Free-form labels — Key account, Cash only, Export. A partner may carry several. Tags are the flexible classification; types are the structural one.

5. Sales teams

Screen: /partners/config/teams/create/

A sales team groups salespeople. Assigning a customer to a team and a salesperson is what makes the sales performance report meaningful, and it is what the Merchandising module reads when planning routes.

1. Select Create team.
2. Enter the team name.
3. Add members.
4. Save.

5.5 Creating a partner

Screen: /partners/create/

The form is organised into tabs. Work through them in order.

Overview tab

Addresses and contacts tab

A partner can hold many addresses and many contact people.

To add one:

1. Select Add contact / address.
2. Choose the type: - Contact — a person. Captures name, job title, email, phone, mobile. - Invoice address — where bills are sent. - Delivery address — where goods go. Sales orders offer these. - Follow-up address — for collections correspondence. - Other address.
3. Complete the fields shown. The form changes depending on the type, so a contact asks for a job title and an address asks for a street.
4. Mark one address of each type as default if you have several. The default is pre-selected on new documents.
5. Save.

Delivery addresses are worth care. They appear on the sales order and print on the delivery note. A missing or wrong one causes a physical delivery failure, not just a data error.

Sales and purchase tab

Accounting tab

Save the partner.

5.6 Bank accounts

A partner's bank details are held as separate records so a partner may have several.

Screens:

/partners/<id>/bank/add/     add a bank account
/partners/banks/<id>/edit/   edit
/partners/banks/<id>/delete/ delete

1. Open the partner, go to the accounting area, and select Add bank account.
2. Enter account holder name, account number, IBAN, SWIFT, bank name and branch.
3. Save.

Bank accounts are used by the bank statement reconciliation rules (Chapter 12) to recognise incoming payments automatically. Filling in the account number properly is what makes automatic matching work.

5.7 Archiving a partner

Screen: /partners/<id>/archive/

Archiving removes a partner from dropdowns on new documents while keeping every historical document intact.

1. Open the partner.
2. Select Archive.
3. Confirm.

Archive rather than delete. A partner with any transaction cannot be deleted, and should not be.

5.8 Giving a customer portal access

A customer can be given a sign-in to see their own invoices and payments. This is covered in full in Chapter 21. In short:

/partners/<id>/portal/grant/     create the portal login
/partners/<id>/portal/reset/     reset its password
/partners/<id>/portal/revoke/    withdraw access

Granting creates a user account limited to that partner's own records and shows you the generated credentials once. Copy them before leaving the page.

5.9 Searching and finding

The partner list at /partners/all/ searches name, reference, email and phone. The filter bar narrows by nature, type, tag, industry, sales team and active status.

Before creating any partner, search for it first. Search on a fragment of the name and on the phone number. Duplicates are far harder to merge than to avoid.

5.10 Troubleshooting