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Hierarchy for customers

started a topic almost 5 years ago

We have numerous customers that are part of a chain. These customers are owned and governed by one head office and they are the primary contact for accounts for all stores. These customers do not want to be receiving 20 statements for 20 stores. They would like one consolidated statement for their entire account. Additionally, having no link for the stores in our system does not reflect important factors of the accounts to our team members.
Can a hierarchy system be implemented where applicable stores can be grouped under one head office?

9 people like this idea
  • I have worked with several businesses that would like this feature, in particular, because QuickBooks Online (QBO) has a hierarchical customer structure and when integrating with DEAR they need to get rid of the hierarchy which is painful.  There are workarounds, but a true hierarchical parent-child customer structure would be much better.


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  • Thanks Stan, a very valid point. Our accounting is with Xero so not sure how the integration would be affected. However, sounds like a parent-child relationship would indeed be more beneficial.


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  • In the meantime, you could create an Additional Attribute for customers, and add the parent as the additional attribute.  It is far from a hierarchical structure but could provide you some reporting on a parent customer basis.

  • Yes very needed feature


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  • Thanks Stan, will keep the attributes option in mind. Unfortunately, it doesn't help me with creating with consolidated statements.


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  • To be clear, and to reiterate, I think this is a feature that many companies would like and some have been upset when learning that DEAR does not support it, particularly when coming from QuickBooks.  For those using hierarchical customers in QBO, integrating with DEAR has required them to change their accounting operations, or do some integration gymnastics the maintain the parent-child customers to QBO.


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  • This looks like a great idea! In our use case a hierarchy could help with tracking relations between dealers and end-users who we also need to keep in our records (currently using another crm).

    So a way to manage it in the UI as well as via the API would be beneficial.

  • We need this feature as well. Currently we are just listing as a delivery address


  • We need this feature! It was painful to integrate QuickBooks and figure out how to best navigate this discrepancy between the two systems. 

    Having a parent-child structure for customers would be immensely helpful. Currently, we utilize a couple of workarounds, including Additional Attributes, to help find solutions, but none of them are as elegant as we'd like.  


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  • We need this feature as well! Please implement it asap.


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  • @DEAR, note similar additional request here: https://support.dearsystems.com/support/discussions/topics/11000029354


  • The workaround we have been using to get DEAR to synchronize QBO child customers is to temporarily disassociate the parent-child relationship in QBO, sync with DEAR, and then re-enable the parent-child relationship in QBO, after which point the child customer continues to be properly associated between DEAR and QBO.  But it is a fragile sort of solution that needs to be maintained - for example, for a new child customer, you need to go through the same process.


    Now, I have run into a situation with a client business where this workaround is not viable, or very painful, because of a constraint in QBO.  See the example from QBO below.


    DEAR - We really need this feature request implemented somehow, or some other solution, that will allow synchronization of parent-child customers with QBO.


    image



9 people like this idea
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