Setting Up a Customer
Let's set up a real customer — Northwind Trading Ltd, a VAT-registered business in the UK that buys from our REDA One UK Ltd company. We'll fill in each field, explain why it's there and what it later does, and finish by raising an invoice that fills itself in. A customer is simply an account you sell to; the goal of this setup is that every future sale to them gets the right tax, the right due date and a compliant invoice with no manual work.
Access you'll need. A customer account is the standard Salesforce Account record, so customers are typically set up by Accounts Receivable v2 users or an Accounting Admin v2. Permission to create or edit the account itself comes from your Salesforce profile's access to the Account object, not from the REDA financial permission sets.
Step by step — Northwind Trading Ltd
Open the account
On the new (or existing) account, enter the company name and billing address.
Set Financial Type to Customer
This is the field that makes the account usable on the sales side. It will now appear in Sales Invoice / Cash Receipt lookups — and stay out of purchase lookups.
Set Territory to United Kingdom
Anchors the account to the UK for grouping and reporting. (Leave blank only for truly global accounts.)
Set Tax Jurisdiction to United Kingdom
The tax engine treats this as the destination when working out tax — so a UK customer gets UK VAT.
Enter the Tax Registration Number
Northwind's VAT number, e.g. GB123456789. This prints on the invoice PDF as the buyer's tax registration — required for a valid VAT invoice.
Choose the Party Tax Profile
Choose the profile that describes them — a registered UK business (e.g. GB-REG-B2B). This decides which tax rules apply: a registered business is treated differently from an end consumer. If the profile is marked tax-exempt, every invoice to this customer produces zero tax automatically.
Set the Default Payment Term
Net 30 here — every invoice to Northwind will be due 30 days after its date. (See Payment Terms.)
Set PDF Language and Locale
For a UK customer, en and en_GB — so amounts read £1,234.56 and the document is in English. Leave blank to use the entity's default.
Skip the sales withholding fields
Leave the Withholding Tax Setup (Sales) fields blank — they don't drive any calculation. If a customer ever does withhold tax from a payment to you (common in India or Brazil), you record it when their certificate arrives, as a Cash Receipt of type WHT Received. See Sales-Side WHT.
Switch Financial Active on and save
Confirms the account is open for business. Save.
The payoff — raise an invoice
Create a Sales Invoice and pick Northwind Trading Ltd. Without typing anything else:
| Invoice field | Filled in as | From |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | GBP | the selling entity (REDA One UK Ltd) |
| Payment Term & Due Date | Net 30 → invoice date + 30 days | Default Payment Term |
| VAT | 20% | Party Tax Profile + Tax Jurisdiction → UK rules |
| Buyer VAT number on the PDF | GB123456789 | Tax Registration Number |
| Language & formatting | English, £ format | PDF Language + Locale |
The whole invoice configured itself from the customer record. That's the return on a few minutes of setup — multiplied across every invoice you'll ever send them.
How the due date is actually worked out
It's worth knowing the exact chain, because it explains what happens when something is missing. When an invoice is saved without a due date, REDA looks in three places, in order:
The invoice's own Payment Term
If the invoice carries a payment term (auto-filled from the customer, or changed by hand for a one-off deal), its Net Days win: Due Date = Invoice Date + Net Days.
The customer's Default Payment Term
No term on the invoice? The account's Default Payment Term supplies the Net Days instead.
A 30-day fallback
Nothing anywhere? REDA assumes 30 days. The invoice still gets a due date — just perhaps not the one you agreed. That's why setting the account's term matters.
A due date you type in yourself always stands — the chain only runs when the field is left blank.
Retiring a customer
When a customer stops trading with you, don't delete the account — its invoices, receipts and statements are part of your books. Instead, switch Financial Active off. The account disappears from lookups on new documents, so nobody can accidentally invoice them, while every historical document, the account ledger and its reporting stay exactly as they were. Switch it back on and the relationship resumes where it left off.
A few things to get right
- Financial Type must be Customer (or Customer & Vendor) or the account won't appear on Sales Invoices at all.
- Tax Jurisdiction and Party Tax Profile drive the tax — if VAT comes out wrong or zero, check these two first.
- The Tax Registration Number is the buyer's, not yours — it's printed for the customer's compliance.
- Use one account per tax location. A customer that's registered in several states should be separate accounts, each with its own jurisdiction.
Where to go next
- Creating a Sales Invoice — put the new customer to work.
- Customer Account Ledger — the running statement of everything they owe and have paid.
- Payment Terms — Net Days, discount windows and the 2/10 Net 30 pattern.
Frequently asked questions
No — use the existing one. REDA's financial fields live on the same Account, so you just fill them in. One shared record keeps sales and finance in sync.
Choose an end-consumer Party Tax Profile instead of a registered-business one, and you usually won't have a tax registration number for them. The tax engine then applies consumer rules.
It's strongly recommended. Without one, invoices don't go undated — REDA falls back to a generic 30 days — but that's rarely what you actually agreed. Pick the real term you've negotiated.
Set Financial Type to Customer & Vendor and also fill the vendor-side fields — see Setting Up a Vendor. One account, both roles.
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