How to Save Changes to a Customer
Every change you make on the customer screen, in any section, is held until you save it, and then saved together in one go. Save with Save at the top right of the customer screen, with Save in the Unsaved changes bar at the bottom, or by pressing Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S).
How do I save a change to a customer?
To save a customer, change what you need in any section of the customer screen and select Save at the top right, or press Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S). All the changes you made, across every section, are saved together.
- Open the customer from Customers.
- Change the fields you need, on the Overview or in any section on the rail.
- Check the Unsaved changes bar at the bottom of the screen, which says how many fields you have changed.
- Select Save in the header or in the bar, or press Ctrl+S.
While the save is running the bar's button reads Saving…. When it finishes, the bar disappears, a short Saved message appears and the customer is read again, so you see exactly what was stored. The printed address, for example, is rebuilt from the address lines when you change one of them.
Contacts are the one exception: a contact has its own Save contact button and is saved on its own, so it never needs the customer's Save.
What is the Unsaved changes bar on the customer screen?
The Unsaved changes bar slides up at the bottom of the customer screen as soon as anything differs from what was last saved, and disappears again when nothing does. It shows how many fields you have changed, for example 1 field or 3 fields, and has two buttons:
- Discard puts every field back to what was last saved. Use it to abandon your changes without leaving the customer.
- Save saves them, exactly like the header's Save or Ctrl+S.
The count is worked out by comparing, not by remembering keystrokes: if you change a field and then type its old value back, it no longer counts, and when nothing is left the bar goes away on its own.
Discard works only before you save. Once a customer is saved, the customer screen has no undo: to put a value back, change it back by hand and select Save again.
Warning: Discard cannot be undone. Everything you typed since the last save on this customer is gone.
Why does the Save button say Nothing to save yet?
Save in the customer screen's header says "Nothing to save yet" when you hover over it and does nothing when pressed, because you have not changed anything since the customer was last saved. Change a field and it works again; the Unsaved changes bar appearing at the bottom is the sign that there is something to save. Ctrl+S likewise does nothing when there is nothing to save, and it never opens the browser's own save-page window on this screen.
On a new customer the header's button reads Save customer and always works, because a title is all a new customer needs.
Two other messages can stop Save for a moment when your company has added its own fields to the customer Overview:
- Loading the custom fields… means those extra fields are still being read. Wait a second and try again.
- The custom fields could not be read. means reading them failed. A red box above the fields says so, with a Retry button; select it, then save.
Why was my customer not saved?
When a save is refused, the customer screen says why in a red box above the fields and keeps everything you typed. If a required field is empty, ABM Service does not even try to save: it names the field and opens the section where that field is.
- "A customer title is required.", "A customer code is required." and "A customer group is required." take you to the Overview, and so does "A currency is required." on a new customer.
- "A trading term is required." takes you to Credit & terms.
- "A bank account name is required once the customer is taken by direct debit." takes you to Bank & direct debit.
Fill the field in, and the message goes as you type; then save again.
Other refusals come back only once the save has been sent, some of them because they are checked against your company's other customers, and they appear in the same red box on the customer screen:
- A code already in use: "Customer code … already exists. … is free.", with a button reading Use and the free code, which puts that code in the Code box for you.
- A box that is too long for the database, for example a phone number of more than 20 characters on a new customer: "Phone is at most 20 characters", followed by how many were given.
- An invoice-to account that no longer exists ("The invoice-to account does not exist."), or that is kept in a different currency from this customer ("Billing account currency does not match this customer's.").
- Bank details that must be unique, such as a debit ID or a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) mandate ID that already belongs to another customer ("That debit ID belongs to another customer.").
- Bank details that go together: the bank account number, sort code and debit ID are filled in all three or none, and so are the BIC, IBAN and mandate ID. Bank & direct debit on the rail explains these.
If your company has added its own fields to the Overview, a value that breaks one of their rules (too long, not a whole number, not a date) is refused in the same red box, starting with the field's name, before anything is sent.
What happens if two people edit the same customer?
If two people change the same customer at the same time, whoever saves last wins, for the whole customer and not just the fields they touched. ABM Service does not lock a customer while someone has it open, and it does not warn you that somebody else is editing it; this is how ABM has always worked.
To avoid overwriting a colleague's change:
- Select Refresh at the top right of the customer screen before you save, if you have had the customer open for a while.
- Look at the Unsaved changes bar. Refresh keeps your typing, so any field a colleague changed in the meantime now shows as one you would change back.
- Select Discard and make your change again if you want to keep their version, or Save if yours should win.
Do I need to save before leaving the customer screen?
You do not lose your changes by leaving the customer screen for another screen: ABM Service keeps what you typed, and when you come back to the same customer it is still there, with the Unsaved changes bar showing. It is not saved, though, until you select Save. This is what lets you, for example, select Log a call, deal with the call and come back to finish editing the customer.
While the changes wait, a reminder with the customer's name and the word unsaved sits in the bottom-left corner of every screen. Select the reminder to go back to the customer screen with your typing in it. Its × button, pressed twice (the second press reads Discard?), throws the changes away without opening the customer.
A save that is already running when you leave carries on and finishes by itself.
Unsaved changes to a customer are kept only in that browser tab or ABM Service desktop app window, until you close or reload it: they are not written anywhere else and do not follow you to another computer. Closing or reloading a browser tab makes your browser ask first; closing a desktop app window does not ask, so save the customer before you close it.