3.3. Customers
This is your customers control center, where you can store and manage their data, their finances and also their computers. You can even cut all customer computers off with single mouse click.
 | Automatic cutoff of computers which owners are in debt is performed by lms-cutoff Perl script. |
3.3.1. List
After you select 'List' you'll see list of your users, that can be filtered based on selected criteria (customer status, group or network) or sort by any highlighted column. Warning triangle on the right side of the record shows if any warnings are active for the customer. Computer icon next to triangle informs you about computers status (connected of cutoff). Clicking of any of those two symbols toggles status for all computers of the given customer.
Records of customers with negative balance will have 'payback' icon (stack of coins), which allows you to account instant payment for the customer, which value will reset his debt.
When you click on selected customer you'll get screen with details for the customer, divided in several panels: customer details, computer details, liabilities details and customer account details. You can also select to edit any of the panels on this screen, define customer liabilities, payoff or charge the customer.
3.3.2. New Customer
This option will let you enter data for new customer record. You can enter his last and first name here, or if your customer is also legal company, enter company name in "Name" and company representative in "Forename" field. You should also fill customers phone (up to 3) and address (you can enter additional address for correspondence) and his status (connected, waiting in queue, prospect).
| Wrong capitalization (uppercase) of customer's last name is one of most frequent bug reports. Uppercase is implemented via SQL functions and thus you should seek for solution in your DB engine configuration. |
3.3.3. Search
You're able to search customers (including deleted customers), using various criteria. This module is more powerful than appropriate quick search box in left panel, as you can specify exact field names to search and if many customers are found, the list of records will be returned, not only the first one.
3.3.4. Groups
This is a place where it's possible to divide your customers into groups. After you click 'Groups' you'll see list of all defined groups with some basic information. Clicking on selected group will give you details view, where you are able to edit this group properties, and view/add/remove group members.
3.3.5. New Group
You can define new group here, providing its name is unique, and it only contains letters, digits and underscore and minus signs. Groups are being used in scripts configuration, and for this reason group names cannot contain spaces.
3.3.6. Notices
In this module, you're able to write administrative notice (message) which will appear on customers Web browser screen and assign it massively to all or majority of your customers (just pick them using selection box on the left). It's also possible here to deselect administrative messages massively here.
3.3.7. Reports
Set of modules to provide printer-friendly version of your records:
Customer list with filter and sort abilities,
Liability report for any range of customer(s), for specified date,
Customer balance for selected period