Know what a customer stop refuses, and tell the people who will meet it
Steps 2 and 3 of stopping supply to a customer who is not paying: know exactly where the stop reaches before somebody finds the gap, then tell the people who will meet the refusal. It follows Step 1, where you set Credit Limit Status or Credit Term Status to BLACKLISTED on the customer record.
- Step 2: know exactly what the stop refuses, and what it lets through.
- Step 3: tell the people who will meet the refusal.
The running example is GadgetSphere Distribution (GSD), stopping a small systems integrator who owes RM 64,800 across four invoices, the oldest 97 days past due. The same customer has an account with the retail company (GS), occasionally buys at the GS-KV-01 counter, and orders cables on account from the online store run by GSO; all three companies run in one BigLedger tenant, so the integrator is one customer record that all three share. There is also a draft order at GSD for RM 18,900.
Step 2: Know exactly what the stop refuses, and what it lets through
The outcome: you know where the gaps are before somebody finds them.
| Refused at FINAL | Not refused |
|---|---|
| Sales order | Quotation |
| Sales invoice | Credit note, debit note, refund note |
| Cash bill, including at the POS counter | Sales return |
| Outbound delivery order | Job sheet |
| Receipts. You still want their money |
Three consequences:
- The draft order is not deleted. The RM 18,900 draft order at GSD stays in the listing. Anyone who presses FINAL on it is refused. Tell the salesperson so they do not keep trying, and tell the customer so they are not waiting for goods.
- Quotations still go out. A salesperson can keep quoting a stopped customer, and the refusal arrives only when the quotation becomes an order. If your sales team quotes large projects weeks ahead, tell them.
- Service work is not stopped. A job sheet is not refused. If you run a repair or installation desk, decide whether a stopped customer’s jobs should be accepted, and tell that desk yourself.
Every route a sale can take, and whether the stop sees it. The table above is about document types. The question that matters at a group like GadgetSphere is the route, because the same sales order can arrive from a screen, a till, a store or an integration:
| The sale arrives… | Is the stop checked? | What you will see |
|---|---|---|
| From the sales order, sales invoice or delivery order screen | Yes, when FINAL is pressed | The refusal message, and the document stays a draft |
| From a listing, with several drafts selected and FINAL pressed once | Yes, one document at a time | The stopped customer’s drafts are refused and stay DRAFT; the other customers’ drafts go through. Each refusal is a brief notice, so open the listing afterwards rather than trusting the screen |
| As a cash bill at the till, online | Yes, when the bill is completed | The cashier sees the refusal at payment |
| As a cash bill at a till working offline | Yes, but only when the till reconnects and sends the bill | The customer has already left with the goods. The bill stays in the till’s unsent queue and is refused again at every sync until you lift the stop or deal with the bill |
| As an invoice made from a finalised order or delivery order (Convert) | Yes, against the order’s customer | The conversion is refused |
| As an invoice a document flow raises automatically when an order is finalised | Checked when that order was finalised, moments earlier | Usually nothing new, because the invoice was made straight after the order passed the check. An invoice the flow is still waiting to make because stock was short is held by the stop as well |
| From an integration, finalising through the API | Yes, at the finalise call | The same refusal, returned to the integration |
| From the online store, at checkout | No | A finalised sales order appears for the stopped customer. See the next paragraph |
The online store does not look at the stop. A checkout turns the basket straight into a finalised sales order without the FINAL checks the screens run, so a trade buyer you have stopped can still order on account. In GadgetSphere’s case, the integrator’s purchasing officer can still order cables from GSO’s store. Two things protect you. The delivery order and the invoice raised from that order are refused, so nothing ships or bills unless somebody re-keys it. And the store has its own credit check: in a store restricted to customer accounts, a basket bigger than the customer’s available credit is refused or sent to the payment gateway. So for a stopped customer who uses your store on account, also deactivate their credit limits in the store’s currency. A trade customer with no active limit gets no credit figure, and the store counts that as zero, so none of their on-account baskets gets through (Deciding on Credit explains the store’s check). A basket they pay for at checkout carries no credit risk. Re-activate the limit when you lift the stop.
Why it is all or nothing. The stop is a decision a person made to stop trading, so there is no “allow this one document” option. An exception means lifting the stop, finalising, and putting it back. That makes every exception a visible, deliberate act by someone who can edit customers. If you find yourself doing this every week, the customer is not really on stop, and it is better to say so.
The stop is not the credit-limit check, and the two work well together. BigLedger has a second, gentler control: an optional check on the sales order and sales invoice screens that refuses FINAL once the customer’s available credit in that company is used up, alongside an over-limit warning when an invoice’s customer is picked. Use that check instead of the stop when the problem is size rather than trust: a payment frees up credit and the next order goes through without anybody touching the customer. It works only on those two screens, and only with the setting on, so it does not reach the till, the delivery order screen or an integration. The stop reaches all of them. How the available figure is worked out is in Deciding on Credit.
Step 3: Tell the people who will meet the refusal
The outcome: nobody at the order desk or the counter is surprised, and nobody gets around the stop by accident.
Where the warning appears, and where it does not:
- Sales invoice screen. A warning appears as soon as the customer is picked: “This account is blacklisted. Transactions are not allowed for this customer.” The alert message appears above it.
- Sales order screen. Only your alert message appears when the customer is picked. The refusal itself arrives at FINAL.
- Delivery order screen. Plan on no warning. The refusal arrives at FINAL.
- POS counter. No warning at all, and the till does not show the alert message either. The cashier finds out when the bill is completed. A till working offline finds out later still, when it reconnects, after the goods have gone. If a branch runs offline, put the stop list at the counter.
- Online store. No warning and no refusal. Deal with it through the credit limit, as in Step 2, and tell whoever processes the store’s orders.
Send a short note to the order desk, the delivery team, the online store’s order team and the branch supervisors who serve this customer:
From today, [customer] is on stop across GS, GSO and GSD. Orders, invoices, delivery orders and cash bills will be refused with “Customer is blacklisted…”. Please do not re-key under another customer record. Refer the customer to credit control on 03-xxxx xxxx.
The walk-in gap at the counter. The check applies to the customer picked on the bill. If the cashier sells to the integrator’s staff as a walk-in customer, nothing is refused. For a cash sale that is often fine, because cash is not credit risk, but the purchase then does not appear against their account and the e-invoice does not name them as the buyer. Decide which your policy is, and tell the branches. Either way, the cashier should not be the person making that choice at the till.
The whole group, not just your company. The flag is on the customer record, which every company in the tenant shares. Stopping the integrator at GSD also stops them at GS and GSO. That is usually what you want. If it is not (for example, retail is allowed to keep selling for cash), the only way to get it is the walk-in rule above.
Two things look like a per-company stop and are not:
- The Credit Limit Status and Credit Term Status boxes on the customer’s Company tab. When you link a company to a customer, the form offers two boxes with the same names as the dropdowns on the Main tab. They are free text, they are saved on that company’s link, and nothing that finalises a document reads them. Typing
BLACKLISTEDthere stops nothing, at that company or anywhere else. Use the dropdowns on the Main tab. - A group company in a different BigLedger tenant. Each tenant has its own customer records. If one of your companies runs in a separate tenant, the integrator there is a different record, and it needs its own stop, set by somebody who can edit customers in that tenant.
What success looks like for this part
You can name which of the customer’s documents and routes the stop refuses and which it lets through; your note has gone to the order desk, the delivery team, the online store’s order team and the branch supervisors who serve the customer; and if the customer buys on account from your online store, none of their credit limits is active in the store’s currency. Then carry on to Step 4, and when you are done run the whole task’s success check.
Common mistakes in this part
The two that belong to these steps, setting the stop and telling nobody, and expecting the stop to cover the online store, are with the rest of the task’s mistakes under Common mistakes on the first page.
Next: protect the stop from being wiped out, and lift it when the money arrives.
Related documentation
- Can This Customer Take More Goods? Deciding on Credit — exposure across the group, and the release, hold, part-ship or refuse decision that comes before a stop
- Customer Maintenance — the two status dropdowns, the alert message and the customer status
- Sales Invoice (Internal) — every FINAL refusal by name
- Sales module — the credit-limit setting and the stop side by side, and the other controls a sale passes through