Linking global customer accounts

Kinetic ERP
1

We’ve been trying for over a year to move forward with linking our global accounts (i.e. customers who we have set up in several different companies). Mainly just posting this to vent but if anybody has successfully done this on an existing database (i.e. customers and contacts already exist) not a new fresh database where you can set it up properly from the start, and has any suggestions or tricks, I’m all ears.

  • When performing the link, the salesperson doesn’t get set correctly on the linked account in the child company. No answer from support when this will be fixed, but they want to know if we would like to pay professional services to fix it for us. lol.

  • Can’t delete duplicate contacts (because they have been used on a quote). Can’t remove the duplicate contact from the quote (because quotes require a primary contact and it can’t be moved, nor can a new contact be added to a closed quote. But there is no option to NOT link inactive contacts when performing the link via DMT. And the inactive contacts fail to link because they are duplicates. Once one contact fails to link, none of the subsequent contacts for that account will link, leaving a half-linked account. Support’s answer is to just delete all of our quotes (unacceptable). Then delete the contacts.

  • Also cannot update contacts to make them unique, OR delete them using DMT, because DMT fails on inactive contact records. This may be fixed at some point but they won’t say when.

  • When linking a customer manually (see above deadend re: DMT linking) you CAN pick and choose which contacts to link. But in Kinetic, if you choose to link a contact that then fails to link for whatever reason, there is no longer any skip button like there was in classic so there is no way to get past the error. All you can do is close the entire window. Relaunch customer entry. Relaunch link customer.
    Find the customer again. UNLINK the customer. Then RELINK the account to get back into the contact linking dialog. Per support this is working as designed.

  • After having finally made it to this point, and manually linked the customer and contacts, we find that the contact is still editable in the child company. Support can’t explain this after reviewing our global tables setup and reportedly can’t reproduce it either.

Should we just give up? I am all for struggling through difficult things in epicor (story of my life) but this is just beyond. The primary objective here is to be able to set a global credit limit for the customer that would apply across all companies, so we aren’t juggling credit limits between companies (i.e. they are on hold in one company, but have credit available in another). It would be nice if the customer and contact details didn’t have to be updated in each company individually either, but that is a secondary concern. Is there ANY other possible way to do this since the global customer thing is beginning to feel utterly impossible?

2

Contacts in Epicor are…hmm…tricky. I have had frustrations with contacts since E9, so I feel you there.
Have you looked into National Accounts? This would allow you to link existing customers under a national account and would be able to share/establish global credit limits within that. Not sure if that’d fix your needs but might be worth looking into.
Second, I can tell you’re frustrated in general, particularly with being overpromised and underdelivered. If it is possible, I’d really recommend passing the ownership of the solution on to someone else, including Epicor professional services, and really focusing on owning the requirements rather than the solution. I’ve been there where you have to own the problem and the solution and feel like your hands are tied from a technical perspective.
This particular issue should be solvable with the right knowledge, but getting there by yourself is in the hard bucket. A little money well spent with the right group could get you over the hump and onto actually benefiting from the system instead of fighting it every time.
Just my 2 cents…

3

Is it though? Really? Have spent many hours with the best multicompany consultant in Epicor PS and still no solutions. National global accounts are much worse - the global credit limits and available credit simply don’t work. Too many cases/PRBs to list.

1 Like
4

I tend to believe if there is a will, there’s a way :slight_smile:

5

Die Parks And Recreation GIF

1 Like
6

I wonder if you could come up with a custom solution for this. A purpose built custom record to associate to customers which would represent the global entity and it’s credit. Then you could build out infrastructure to calculate credit usage across all customers linked to the global entity.

7

It’s an interesting idea but I’m not sure I am up for essentially rewriting the entire credit module on my own.