The Find Customer Dialog |
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If you want to find a particular customer (or print a customer report), you can use the Find button on the Customer Details dialog. If you enter part of the customer's Last Name on the Customer Details dialog before clicking Find, then that will automatically be used to do an initial search. (This must be done on a "New Record" -- don't try to do it on top of an existing customer record!)
You can also get to this by using the Find Customer button from the New Reservation dialog, or by using the main menu selection Customers / Find Customer. If you tend to use Find Customer most of the time before adding a new customer, there is an option to make the customer toolbar icon go directly to Find Customer instead of Add New Customer (see Maintenance / Program Options / Functions).
There is also a handy shortcut key that will open this dialog -- Ctrl-U. (Ctrl-C would have made more sense, but that's a standard command reserved for the "Copy" function by most Windows programs, including Campground Master.)
The Find Customer dialog allows you to search the customer database in a variety of ways. If you don't enter part of a customers's name before clicking Find Customer, then the initial list will either be blank or it will have the entire customer list, depending on the option selected in Maintenance / Program Options / Functions.
Note: If all customers are shown initially, only the most important fields are shown to make it faster (name, city, state, and notes), but after making any filter changes the fields shown will change according to the filter type. For instance if you do want to see all of the fields for all customers then you can check and then uncheck the Filter By box to refresh the list.
If you did enter part of the last name first, then of course the list will already show matching customers.
Regardless of what's shown initially, the default search method ("Filter by") is Last Name, and the cursor will already be in the "Starts With" field ready for you to type a name. You don't have to enter the whole name, just the first part. Of course the more letters you enter, the more precise the search will be. After entering a few letters, press Tab or Enter (or click "Search"). A list of matches will show up, and the first entry will be selected by default, and you can scroll down the list to select another one using the arrow keys.
Note that Last Name searches have a special feature -- while it indicates "Starts With" as the search type, it will actually look for any word in the field starting with the text. So for instance a search for "Horn" will also match last names "van Horn", "Smith & Horn" or "Smith/Horn", so you can enter multiple last names in the Last name field and still locate them.
If you prefer to see the entire list of customers (not recommended for large lists of several thousand), you can uncheck the "Filter By" option. All customers will be shown with nearly all of their information, and you can sort by any column to help you find a customer.
Other filtering options include address, city, state, zip, country, phone number, E-mail, driver's license, vehicle license, discount type, discount ID, and notes. Any custom fields you've added will also be available to filter. The searches are somewhat intelligent -- for instance, a phone number search allows you to enter any portion of a phone number, and any punctuation is ignored. For instance, entering "555" will match any phone number (in any of the 3 phone number fields) containing three 5's in a row, even if they are separated like in the number (915) 552-0406. In addition, the list will always show the appropriate fields -- for instance, if you search by zip code, the address fields are displayed but not the phone numbers or licenses.
Once a list is displayed, you can print the entire list, or print a Form for any customers selected, by clicking the Print List / Forms button. Therefore this dialog can also be used to print out filtered customer lists, or for batch-printing forms, envelopes or labels for selected customers. Once this button is clicked, the Select Form dialog will allow you to choose what to print -- the list in grid format or a form for each selected customer.
You can also use Export List to export the data to a CSV file.
Note: Customers with warning flags will be shown with a red background -- but if it's the currently selected customer, it will be in blue due to the selection highlight.
Once you find the desired customer, select it by clicking the line with the mouse and clicking Use (the Search button automatically changes to Use once a customer is selected), or double-click on the customer line. (If only one customer is displayed, you can simply press Enter). This will open the Customer Details dialog for that customer, or if you're making a new reservation it will put that customer information in the reservation. A shortcut to using the mouse to click on a customer is to press Alt-G, which will jump "into" the grid, then use the up/down arrow keys to select a customer.
If you don't find a customer or you're finished with finding customers, typically you would click Cancel. In some cases, the Cancel button may show "Cancel / Add New", in which case that will take you right to the Add New Customer dialog ready to enter a new one (this depends on how you got to Find Customer in the first place). This is probably what you want to do in most cases, but if it's not then just Cancel out of that dialog also.
Add New Customer
In some cases, an Add New Customer button will be available so you can add a new customer instead of selecting a different one, for instance if the customer you're looking for isn't in the database. Just use this function to enter the customer information, and that new customer will be used for whatever function you're working on.
You will also see a "Merge Customers.." button in the dialog. This is useful if you see multiple customer entries for a customer that you know are really the same person. This button will be enabled if you select 2 or more customers at once, and will allow you to merge them safely.