Customer Master Inquiry (CMI) is an essential tool for managing customer information in Prophet 21. It provides a comprehensive view of customer data, including contact information, sales history, Credit status, and more.

In today’s P21 training tutorial, we will go over several ways to access CMI (including drill-downs and keyboard shortcuts). This tutorial will also cover several of the major tabs and some general tips and tricks for utilizing Customer Master Inquiry.

How to open Customer Master Inquiry:

In this example, we’ll start off with a sales order. You could access CMI directly from the main menu, but I want to do it from Sales Order Entry to show you how to use keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard Shortcuts:

In all variations of the Prophet 21 web version, F8 opens up Customer Master Inquiry. If you come directly from the sales order screen with a Customer ID, it will automatically take you to the record for that customer. If you use the F8 shortcut without selecting a pre-filled Customer ID field, it will bring up a blank CMI.

Other ways to access CMI:

Drill-Downs: You can also use the drill-down box in the Customer ID slot as it does the same function.

Main Menu: You can always access Customer Master Inquiry by using the main navigation menu and the Inquiry window.

Customer / Contact Information:

This section displays basic customer information, including the customer’s ID number, the company they are assigned to if you have multiple companies, their primary sales rep, credit status, and when their account was opened. You can also link directly to their website by clicking the link next to the web address.

Note: If you are using customer classes in your company, you do not have to go to Customer Maintenance to change those. You can make changes directly from Customer Master Inquiry.

Bookings Trend:

To the right of Customer / Contact Information, you have booking trends. This graph gives you sales data (that actually looks a lot better if you were in a real environment).

Add Contacts:

In the middle of the Customer Master Inquiry window, you have a list of contacts. You can add new contacts by hitting the little plus symbol () in the upper left corner. Start typing in their information, and when you hit save, CMI will create that contact in the system and assign it to this customer.

Customer Master Inquiry Tabs:

Physical Address:

Now going over the tabs at the bottom, the very first tab will be your physical address. This tab lists the physical location of your customer, which is most likely the address where you will ship orders.

Physical Address has boxes for the following pieces of information:

• Street Address
• Suite/Office Number
• City
• State
• Zip Code
• Country
• Phone Number
• Fax Number
• Toll Free Phone Number
• Company Email Address
• Company URL

Credit Status:

Credit status breaks down the details of the customer’s credit. What is their credit limit? How many open orders are there? How many average days, etc…

• Overview: This section covers basic credit status information―from Customer ID, Credit Limit, and Date Account Opened, to Delinquent A/R Cost to Carry.
• Invoiced Sales (Totals): This section covers accumulated invoiced sales from selected time periods. The info slots include the following: Month To Date, Prior Month, Year to Date, and Last Year To Date. These dates are based on calendar dates rather than general ledger periods.
• High Credit Rate: This section displays the peaks in customer credit usage from selected time periods. The info boxes are Month To Date, Year to Date, and Highest Credit Limit Used. As above, these dates are based on calendar dates rather than general ledger periods.
• Quotes: This section covers annual totals for quote values and the percentages derived from those totals. It includes totals for both YTD and LYTD as well as the % Win Ratio (Amt) and % Win Ratio (Lines) for both year-to-date and last-year-to-date.

Credit:

The credit tab displays the customer’s set credit stats along with their credit limit. You cannot manipulate that information here, but you can view it.

The info boxes in this tab include the following:

• Credit Status
• Credit Limit
• Credit Limit Used
• Highest Credit Limit Used
• Credit Limit Per Order

Aging:

Aging is an especially important tab for insights into aging Accounts Receivables.

Open Orders:

I like to use the Open Orders tab to quickly look at every open sales order for a particular customer. This tab gives you some information about individual orders, including the Order Number, Customer PO Number, Sales Location, Order dates, and Unshipped Values.

You can go into the sales order directly from the Order Number using the drill down. Now depending on how your system is set up, it may go into Sales Order Inquiry. But you can always change that with Dynachange Navigation, which I have covered in a previous video tutorial.

Item Summary:

I like the item summary tab because it gives you a quick history of the items the customer has purchased. This section shows how many units they bought, as well as sales and profit.

There are a couple of different ways you can compare the item purchase history:

• Date Cuttoff: This mode means I am going back a year and looking at the items they bought in the year. And just like everywhere else in the web version, these are filterable. You can also export these.
• YOY Comparison: This mode compares the sales and profit margin information from the last year with the prior year. It helps show sales trends and find problem areas in the customer’s purchase history.
• 30-Day Buckets: This mode compartmentalizes the customer’s purchases into 30-day sections going back two years. It includes the item/group ID, description, and base UOM as well as how many units the customer purchased in the 30-day period.

Sales Pricing:

Sales pricing will show you how a particular customer’s pricing structure is set up in customer master requirements. This tab shows how pricing will work when they place an order. You cannot change the pricing structure here, but you can view it and understand how it is being used.

Pricing:

• Pricing Method
• Source
• Price Multiplier

Library:

• Sales Pricing Library ID
• Description
• Status

Options:

• Job/Contract Pricing
• Always Use Job/Contract Pricing
• Allow Non-Job/Contract Items on Order
• Prompt User for Non-Job/Contract Items
• Cumulative Qty May Exceed Job/Contract QTY
• Use All Contracts

Now again, there are a lot of different other tabs. Some may be more important to you than others.

How to pin tabs in Customer Master Inquiry:

Just like every other screen that has tabs, you can right-click and pin tabs.

Especially if I am an accounting user working with Accounts Receivable, I will always want the Aging tab to be first. I can set it as the Default Tab on Open for customers, prospects, or both.

Remember, the tab you want displayed first will be different depending on your role in the team. For instance, if you are a CS rep, you may want to open Sales Orders first. So, after I right-click, pin, and save the changes, when I reopen Customer Master Inquiry, Aging will be the first tab that opens. 

And that’s a wrap on Customer Master Inquiry in Prophet 21. I tried to condense a very complex tool down as best I could, so if you have more questions about CMI, please leave a comment below.

Continue Learning: The ultimate guide to Item Master Inquiry in Prophet 21.

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