Customer Lookup
This section explains how to look up customers using the Customer Lookup button in the Customers area. (For information about entering a customer on a transaction, see Customers on Transactions.)
- Touch or click the Customers button on the POS home screen.
- Touch or click the Customer Lookup button.
- Enter the customer's First Name and/or Last Name. If necessary, you can select to search only Active or Inactive customers by selecting the corresponding radio button. To clear the filter criteria, touch or click the Reset button.
- Press
or touch/click the Search button. - A list of matching customer records is displayed.
- Select the checkbox on the left for the desired customer. The customer is automatically entered on the transaction.
- Alternatively, touch or click the Quick Customer button to create a new record for the customer.
- Touch or click the Undefined button to continue the transaction without linking the transaction to a customer in the database.
When using the default settings for customer lookup, users can enter any combination of First Name and/or Last Name. Users can easily switch to look up customers by different criteria by touching or clicking the caret and selecting the desired lookup field from the drop-down. Note: The First Name and Last Name fields in the user interface are concatenated and correspond to the "Full Name" selection when defining customer lookup preferences for Prism.
• If a single match is found, the customer is entered on the transaction.
• If multiple matches are found, the list of matches is displayed immediately below the lookup field.
Customer Lookups that use address, phone, or email:
Beginning in Prism 2.2, customer lookups that use the Address1-Address6, Email Address, or Phone fields search for primary and alternate values when multiple addresses, phone numbers and email addresses are defined in the customer record.
The NOT EQUAL operator has been removed from these filters: Address1-6, Phone, Email and Postal Code.
Customer Lookup Search Rules (Centrals vs. Non-Centrals)
Important! When using centrals, only the centrals database will be checked; if the customer is not found in the centrals database, there is no fall back to checking the local database.
When a user looks up a customer (in the Customer Lookup area or at POS), the user selects a lookup field (e.g. Full Name), enters lookup criteria (e.g. "Bob") and selects an operator (e.g. CONTAINS, EQUALS, DOES NOT EQUAL, IS EMPTY, IS NOT EMPTY) from a drop-down.
In both the Customer Lookup and at POS, when Centrals is enabled the drop-down for Operators is disabled. Although the drop-down will show an entry of EQUALS, searches are always done using a CONTAINS query.
When Centrals is disabled (the default), for Customer Lookup (in the Customers area) the drop-down for Operators is enabled and users can select an operator. In the POS area, when looking up a customer to enter the customer on a transaction, the lookup always uses the EQUALS operator.
The following table summarizes the rules:
| Customer Lookup with Centrals Enabled | |
| CONTAINS | When Centrals are enabled and there is a connection to the server, in the Customer Lookup area the operator reads EQUALS and cannot be modified; however, the query that is done is a CONTAINS query The search rules are: Case insensitive Partial matches No wildcard characters (Note: When Centrals is enabled but offline, the operator is hard-coded to EQUALS. The search rules are no wildcards, exact matches only and case sensitive |
| POS Customer Lookup with Centrals Enabled | |
| CONTAINS | When Centrals are enabled and there is a connection to the server, in the POS area the operator reads EQUALS and cannot be modified; however, the query that is done is a CONTAINS query. The search rules are: Case insensitive Partial matches No wildcard characters (Note: When Centrals is enabled but offline, POS searches are case insensitive, no partial matches, and wildcard characters allowed) |
| Customer Lookup with Centrals Disabled | |
| EQUALS | Case Sensitive Exact Match No Wildcard Characters |
| DOES NOT EQUAL | Case Sensitive Exact Match No Wildcard Characters |
| CONTAINS | Case Insensitive Partial Match No Wildcard Characters |
| IS EMPTY | With this option, no characters are entered. The search will return all records that lack an entry in the selected field. Please note that in Prism, you can define multiple addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for customer records. Using the ISEMPTY operator with the "Phone" search element, for example, will not find any records if there are no phone numbers defined a customer. In that case, from the program's point of view, there is nothing to check for being empty or not empty. If a phone number had been added and then, for some reason, the field was made empty (not a typical scenario), the ISEMPTY operator would find the record. |
| IS NOT EMPTY | With this option, no characters are entered. The search will return all records that have an entry in the selected field. |
| POS Customer Lookup with Centrals Disabled | |
| EQUALS | In the POS area, the operator is hard-coded to EQUALS and the search rules are: Case insensitive Wildcard lookup |
When Centrals is Enabled but Offline
The lack of partial matches and wildcards mean you will need to be more specific in your search criteria. For example, normally entering "worth" would find entries like "Woodsworth" and "Worthington" (because of partial match behavior). However, when the centrals server is down, only "Worth" would be found ("worth" or "WORTH" because case-insensitive).
Note: When centrals are enabled but the server is down, when looking up a customer you will see a yellow toast message to warn you about the situation.
Changing Lookup Criteria
By default, the Customer Search dialog displays the First Name and Last Name fields (Full Name). If you need to use different look up criteria, touch or click the down arrow. A list of customer lookup fields is displayed. Select the desired field. The text entry fields changes to the selection.
Creating New Customer from Customer Lookup
If you are unable to locate the customer's record using the Customer Lookup dialog, you can touch or click the Create Customer button to create a new record.
Navigating the List of Results
If a large number of results are returned, you can use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the grid to move between the pages of results. When you find the desired record, touch or click the Select Customer button.