Here is a situation I don't know how to deal with...

A client's customers are mostly stores with a physical location. For 10% of the customers, the invoices go to a different address, the bill-to address. Right now, for those stores, the physical location is set up as a Contact/Ship-to address.

This is a big problem for the customer service staff. When they look up a customer's account, they want to see the store's physical location; it is just confusing for them to see the bill-to address, and even if they knew to look for an alternative address (which they might not), it is cumbersome to find it.

In Payables, this is handled beautifully with the Payee tab - when the fields are filled in, this alternate "pay-to" address appears automatically on checks.

What my client wants is something similar to what Payables has, where the address on the Customer tab is the physical location, and if a "billee" address is filled in on a separate tab, that address overrides the bill-to address on statements/orders/invoices.

The Contact/Ship-to table is useful for other reasons, but it just can't handle this situation.

What can I tell my client?

Thanks

Steve

Is this a factoring situation?

No, some of the stores are in shopping centers and the owner would prefer that the bills be sent to their office somewhere else (sometimes in a different state).

Why not make the physical location the customer address and have the billing location a ship-to. Then have specific forms that place the billing ship location on the invoice. Does that work?

If not, then it can always be suggested as an improvement to the module, although I have only heard of something like this when factoring is involved. Even then the request is infrequent.

I suggested your option with the client but when we discussed it we found it wouldn't work. Two reasons - labels can't be changed on screens and for people to have to reverse them in their minds is tough, and the statements would print with the wrong address (you can't print a ship-to address on a statement).

So I guess the answer is to suggest it as an improvement, unless anyone can think of a different idea.

Steve