How to Choose Which Accounts the Customers List Shows
Every customer account has a status: active, inactive or prospect. The Customers list opens showing Active accounts only, and the Which accounts choice at the top of the filter rail changes that. The same choice can also be reached from the Status column's filter and from the Accounts chip at the start of the filter line.
What does Which accounts do on the Customers list?
Which accounts decides which customer statuses the Customers list shows, and you change it in the Which accounts block at the top of the filter rail, under the Layouts control. It has four buttons in two rows: Active and All on the top row, Inactive and Prospect underneath.
- Open Customers from the navigation menu.
- Find the Which accounts block at the top of the filter rail on the left of the Customers list.
- Select Active, All, Inactive or Prospect.
A choice applies at once; there is nothing to confirm. The Customers list goes back to page 1 and every other filter you have on (a group, a category, a name, a customer picked in the search box) still applies, now to the accounts you chose. So if a customer is picked and you choose a status that customer does not have, the Customers list says No customers match; take the Customer chip off first.
The Which accounts choice is part of what a saved layout remembers, so a layout can open the Customers list on All or on Prospect if that is how you saved it.
What do Active, All, Inactive and Prospect mean?
The four Which accounts buttons on the Customers list each show one set of accounts. Hover over a button to see its description:
- Active — "The accounts work can be logged against." This is what the Customers list opens on.
- All — every account, whatever its status, including any status your company uses of its own. Its description says "every letter", because each status is stored as a letter.
- Inactive — "The closed accounts."
- Prospect — "The accounts that are not customers yet."
Use Active for day-to-day work, All when you are not sure what state an account is in, Inactive to look up an old account, and Prospect to see the potential customers your company has recorded.
ABM Service cannot delete a customer or merge two duplicate customers. To retire an account, open it from the Customers list, set Status on its Overview to Inactive and save it: it then leaves the Active list and shows under Inactive, with its history kept.
Inactive accounts and prospects are not offered in the Customer box when you log a new call, because that box searches active customers only. To log a call for one, open its screen from the Customers list and select Log a call there, or change its Status to Active on its Overview and save it.
Where else can I change Which accounts on the Customers list?
You can change Which accounts in three places on the Customers list, and all three are the same setting, so they always agree:
- The Which accounts block at the top of the filter rail.
- The Status column's filter button. Select the filter button on the Status column heading. It opens a panel headed Which accounts with the same four buttons and the note "The rail's Which accounts block is the same choice, and it applies at once." A choice applies straight away and the panel closes; there is no Apply button.
- The Accounts chip. The first chip on the filter line above the list always reads Accounts: followed by the current choice. Select it to open the same panel.
The Status column's filter button is shown as on whenever the list is showing anything other than All, because the list is then narrowed even if you did not narrow it yourself. This is how you can tell, with the filter rail folded away, that some accounts are hidden.
Why can't I clear the Accounts filter on the Customers list?
The Accounts chip on the Customers list has no ×, because the list is always showing some set of accounts and there is nothing to clear it back to. To see every account, choose All in the Which accounts block or in the chip's panel.
For the same reason, Clear all filters at the end of the filter line takes off the picked customer and all the column and tick-list filters, but leaves Which accounts as it is. If you cleared everything and the list is still shorter than you expect, look at the Accounts chip: it may still say Active, Inactive or Prospect.
Why is a customer I just added missing from the Customers list?
A new customer starts with the status Prospect unless you change its status before saving, and the Customers list normally shows Active accounts only. So a newly added customer does not appear until you choose Prospect or All in Which accounts, or change the customer's status to active on its own screen.
The same applies to any customer you cannot see: if it is inactive or a prospect, it is hidden while Which accounts is on Active. The search box on the toolbar can still find it: type the name, select Also search inactive accounts at the foot of the drop-down, and pick it. The Customers list then switches to All and says why in the filter rail.
What does the Status column on the Customers list show?
The Status column on the Customers list shows each account's status as a word on a coloured chip: Active in green, Inactive in red and Prospect in yellow. The customer's own screen uses the same chip, so the colours mean the same thing in both places.
If your company uses a status of its own that is not one of these three, the Customers list shows it as the letter that is stored, on a grey chip, and those accounts appear only under All. You can also sort the list by Status, or group it by Status from the column heading's menu, to see the accounts in each status together.