One record per wholesale account carrying terms, ship via, price tier, credit limit, ship complete and warehouse notes, with orders, AR, shipments and financial history on the same screen.
A wholesale account in AIMS360 is one customer record that carries the rules every order inherits, the stores it ships to, the people you email, and the whole history of orders, shipments, returns, invoices and payments. When the buyer at a department store calls, this is the screen your team is already looking at.
It is the record for one wholesale account, the retailer, boutique, distributor or marketplace that buys from you. Each account has a five character code and one record, and that record holds the bill to address, the commercial rules every order inherits, the ship to stores, the contacts, and the full history of orders, shipments, returns, invoices and payments. Sales, customer service and accounting all read from the same screen, so nobody is reconciling three versions of the same account.
Wholesale is where individual customer records matter most, because every retailer has its own terms, pricing, routing instructions and history. Orders from your own online store, marketplaces and retail locations arrive through the omnichannel integrations into the same inventory and accounting, so the wholesale account list sits alongside those channels rather than in a separate system.
More than twenty tabs, which fall into four jobs.
| Job | Tabs | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Customers, additional details, contacts, stores, attachments | The bill to address, the people you email, every ship to location, and the documents that belong to the account: the resale certificate, the signed terms, the vendor guide. |
| Commercial rules | Template defaults, price sheets, credit limit, credit cards, sales rep, SKU setup, EDI | What every order for this account inherits before anyone types a line: terms, ship via, price tier, division, warehouse, order status, customer specific pricing, the in house credit limit, stored cards, the rep and commission, the retailer SKUs and the trading partner setup. |
| History | Customer orders, return authorizations, shipments and returns, accounts receivable, pre-payments, financial history, statements | Everything that has happened on the account, filterable and sortable on the record itself, from open orders through invoices, credits, payments and a year by year financial summary. Print a statement from the same screen. |
| Working the account | Notes, tasks, entity tags, portal login | The private history of the relationship, the follow ups assigned to people, the lists the account belongs to, and the login that lets the buyer place orders in your B2B portal. |
Three of those tabs have their own pages: contacts and email roles, stores and distribution centers, and notes and tasks. Anything you want to track that is not on the list can be added as a custom field on the customer.
The template area of the customer record sets the values a new order for that account opens with. These are mandatory on customer orders anyway, so choosing them here means manual order entry is faster and more consistent, and an order from the B2B portal or a rep's tablet lands with the right terms without anyone touching it.
Net 30 for one account, prepaid for another, and the price tier that decides which wholesale price list they buy from. Set once, applied to every order.
The carrier and service they always ship by, the warehouse that serves them, and the division their business is reported under.
Whether this account's orders open as open or hold, with a default status reason, overriding the system wide setting for this customer only.
Refuse any order for this account that has no purchase order number, whether it is keyed in AIMS360 or created through the API. Retailers that reject invoices without a PO are the usual reason.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Class | A pre-configured classification, so you can separate boutique retail from major department stores in reporting. Worth setting on every account from day one. |
| Region | Where the account is, domestically or internationally, so sales and shipping reports can be cut by territory. |
| COD | Collect on delivery. Flag it here and the shipping integrations honor it when the label is created. |
| Ship completeBehavior | No pick ticket is created for this customer unless 100 percent of the units on the order can be allocated from inventory. For accounts that refuse partial shipments and charge back for them. |
| Credit limit | A whole dollar in house credit limit, used for credit exposure on the AR tab and for the order entry warning described below. Not the limit your factor gave you; that lives in factor approvals. |
| Freight charges | Add a percentage or a dollar amount on top of the actual freight cost for this account, automatically, every time. |
| Shipping, packing and VAS notes | Three text boxes that print on the pick ticket and pass to an integrated 3PL on the outbound 940, so routing instructions, packing rules and value added service requirements reach the floor without a phone call. |
Notes on the customer file copy onto new orders when the order is created. They do not update orders that already exist. If a retailer changes its routing guide mid season, change the customer for the future and fix the open orders individually. Agree with your warehouse on what each of the three boxes is for before you start using them, so both sides read them the same way.
The credit limit view on the accounts receivable tab shows open, unpaid invoices plus approved orders against the limit, which is your real exposure before the next shipment goes out.
On any customer order the total AR for the account is one click from the order header, so the person entering the order can see the balance without leaving the screen.
With the credit limit setting on, saving an order that would exceed the limit shows a warning. Continue and the order saves on hold with your reason code. Stop and it is not saved.
The customer orders tab shows open and hold orders by default and can show any order for the account. Return authorizations and issued credits sit on their own tab, and shipments and returns lists every invoiced order and every return, filterable like any other grid.
Every invoice, payment, adjustment and credit that touches the balance is on the accounts receivable tab. Pre-payments, used or unused, have their own view. Print a statement of open invoices and adjustments for the account from the same record.
A year by year summary of the business you have done with the account, for every year you have worked together. Figures are rounded to the nearest dollar, so use the AR tab or a report when you need the cents.
The AR side of this in depth is on accounts receivable; returns are on returns management. Who changed what on the record, and when, is on the audit trail.
Five characters, letters or numbers. Most brands use something a human can read, like three letters of the name and a two digit counter. If you are loading customers by import, codes can be generated in that pattern for you.
Start typing the address and matching addresses are suggested, so city, state and postal code fill in from the pick. Add the AR contact, and phone numbers format themselves for US numbers.
Choose the rep and their default commission fills in. Currency is mandatory on every customer whether or not you run multi currency, and it cannot be changed once orders exist, so get it right here.
Terms, ship via, price tier, division and warehouse. These are required on every order, so five choices now save a question on every order later.
Class and region at minimum, for reporting. Then decide on ship complete, a credit limit, freight add ons and the warehouse notes for this account.
Add the ship to locations, or the store list and distribution centers for an EDI trading partner, and save. New customers created through import pick up the same defaults for any field the template leaves blank.
The defaults a brand new customer starts with, and which fields you make mandatory, are set under system fields, covered on the custom fields page.
No campaigns, no lead scoring, no pipeline stages. It is the operational record of what the account bought, owes and shipped, plus notes and tasks. Brands that want marketing automation connect a dedicated tool through the customers and CRM integrations and let AIMS360 stay the system of record.
Shipping, packing and VAS notes copy to new orders only. Change them on the customer and open orders keep the old text until someone edits them.
With the setting on, an order past the limit warns and goes on hold if the user continues. Without it, the limit is information. Neither one applies to factored orders, which the factor approves.
Currency is locked once orders exist against the account, and the account code is the key everything hangs off. Both are worth a second look before the first order is saved.
It is the record for one wholesale account: the retailer, boutique, distributor or marketplace that buys from you. Each account gets one customer record with a five character account code, and that record carries the bill to address, the commercial rules every order inherits, the ship to stores, the contacts, and the full history of orders, shipments, returns, invoices and payments. It is the place your sales, customer service and accounting teams all look when a buyer calls.
Yes, with a distinction worth understanding. Each wholesale account gets its own customer record in AIMS360, with its own terms, pricing, credit limit and history. Orders from your own online store, marketplaces and retail locations arrive through the omnichannel integrations into the same inventory, allocation and accounting. So the wholesale account list and the consumer channels share one system of record for stock and money, rather than the wholesale side living in an ERP and the retail side living somewhere else.
It is the operational customer record, not a marketing CRM. The customer master holds the account, the people, the stores, the rules and the history, plus notes and tasks for working the relationship. It does not send campaigns or score leads. Brands that want a pipeline or marketing automation pair it with a dedicated tool through the customers and CRM integrations, and keep AIMS360 as the system of record for what the account actually bought, owes and shipped.
Yes. The template section of the customer record sets the terms, ship via, price tier, division and warehouse that every new order for that account starts with, so an account on net 30 that always ships ground gets net 30 and ground without anyone choosing it. Price sheets go further and give a specific account its own prices or discounts on individual styles, different from the wholesale price everyone else sees.
Five characters, letters or numbers, unique per customer. Brands typically use something recognizable, like the first three letters of the account name plus a two digit counter. If you load customers through the import tool, codes can be generated for you in that pattern. Once an account has orders against it, the code stays put.
It stops a pick ticket from being created for that customer unless every unit on the order can be allocated from inventory at once. Use it for accounts that refuse partial shipments and charge back for them. Leave it off for accounts that are happy to receive what is available now and the balance later, otherwise their orders will sit waiting for the last unit.
You enter a whole dollar credit limit on the additional details tab. From then on the accounts receivable tab on the record can show open invoices plus approved orders against that limit, so you can see credit exposure before you ship, and on any order the total AR for the account is one click away. There is also a system setting that warns at order entry when an order would push the account past its limit, and puts the order on hold with a reason code if the user chooses to continue.
Not silently. With the credit limit setting on, the user saving an order that exceeds the limit sees a warning and decides: continue and the order saves on hold with the reason code you configured, or stop and the order is not saved. Without that setting, the limit is visible but the order goes through, so someone has to review exposure. Either way the in house credit limit is for orders you finance yourself; factored orders are approved by the factor, through factor approvals.
The customer is the account you bill. Stores are that account's ship to locations, whether that is a single boutique address, two hundred department store doors, or a distribution center that receives for all of them. One customer, many stores, and for EDI trading partners the stores carry the store numbers and DC identifiers the retailer requires on every document.
Yes, if you run sales rep by division. A department store account might be worked by one rep for your womenswear division and another for kids, each with their own commission, and the record holds the assignment per division. Brands with one rep per account simply pick the rep on the customer master and the default commission fills in.
The shipping, packing and value added service notes on the customer record print on the pick ticket and travel to an integrated warehouse on the outbound 940, so a 3PL sees them without a phone call. Agree with your warehouse on what each of the three boxes is for before you start filling them in.
No. The shipping, packing and VAS notes on the customer file copy onto new orders at the time the order is created. Orders that already exist keep whatever they had, so if a retailer changes its routing instructions mid season you update the customer for the future and the open orders by hand.
Yes. The accounts receivable tab shows every invoice, payment, adjustment and credit that affects the balance. The financial history tab summarizes each year you have done business with the account. Figures there are rounded to the nearest dollar, so the months can differ from the year to date row by a few dollars; use the AR tab or a report when you need the cents.
Yes. The attachments tab takes spreadsheets, documents, PDFs and images, so the signed terms, the resale certificate, the routing guide and the buyer's price agreement live on the account instead of in someone's inbox.
Yes. Switch on require customer PO for the account and an order cannot be entered for that customer without a purchase order number, whether it is keyed in AIMS360 or created through the API. Retailers that reject invoices without their PO on them are the usual reason.
Yes. The customer record can set the status a new order opens in, open or hold, along with a default status reason, and that overrides the system wide default for this account. It applies to orders entered in AIMS360; orders arriving from third party integrations keep their own status handling.
Yes, through the B2B portal. The customer record holds the portal login for the account, so a buyer can place orders and check their own status against your live inventory, and those orders land on the same customer record with the same terms and pricing.
Yes. The import data tool loads customers from a template, and the defaults you set for new customers apply to anything the template leaves blank. Account codes can be generated during import. A few fields sit outside the template and are set on the record afterward, including carrier account numbers, freight charge add ons and the shipping and packing notes.
The department store with two hundred doors, three reps, a routing guide that changes every season and a factor in the middle. We will show you how that account looks as one record, and what the order entry screen already knows before anyone types.
