Identifying Address, Active & Primary Flags in the Customer Address

IDENTIFYING ADDRESS

The identifying address is an address which is held as a default address in the database against the Customer record. Customers are held in the Customer Architecture (known as Trading Community Architecture or ‘TCA’) as Parties, indicating that they are an entity in their own right. Only one address against a Party record can be flagged as an Identifying Address. This address is then used as a default when database level processes such as geographical searches are performed against all Parties held in the database. As a result there are a number of rules that relate to maintaining Identifying Addresses in against the Customer record:

1. Where addresses are added against a Customer record, one of these addresses needs to be flagged as an Identifying Address. As a result, it is not possible to save a Customer Record with an Address without flagging at least one address as the Identifying Address.
2. Where only one address is added against a Customer record, then this will automatically default as the Identifying Address
3. If > 1 address is added against the Customer record, then the user can select which address to be flagged as the Identifying Address by manually checking/unchecking the Identifying Address flag adjacent to the address record. Only one address can be flagged as the identifying address against the Customer Record

ACTIVE

There are in fact 2 ‘Active’ flags held in the Customer Address screen:

1. Active flag immediately under the address flag of the Customer. This flag indicates that the address is an Active and able to be used when selecting it for billing, statement, dunning or other purposes within the database.
   • If this address flag is made inactive by the user it is no longer visible to be selected by the user for any purpose such as billing, dunning, statements etc. This means that if this address flag is made inactive by the user manually unchecking the ‘Active’ box then all associated Party Site Uses, Customer Account Sites and Account Site Uses will become inactive. In addition, running billing, statements, dunning etc against an inactive address will result in these transactions not being able to be processed. When a Party Site is re-activated, all associated Customer Account Sites uses will become active and therefore billing, statements, dunning etc can continue.
2. Active flag held against the Site Usage (on the Business Purposes Tab). This flag is used just in respect of the associated usage on the specific address.
   • If this flag is made inactive by the user then only that specific usage is no longer able to be performed against the Customer Address. As the Active Flag detailed in (1) above remains active, the address itself remains active and can be picked against other site usages. For example, if the Bill-To site usage flag is made Inactive, then this site can no longer be selected for billing purposes and will not allow existing invoices to be billed. However should the site have a Statement usage then the site can continue to be used to generate statements to the Customer.

PRIMARY

The Primary flag held against the Customer Site Usage indicates that the site specified as the Primary site is the default site for that site usage. There are a number of rules relating to the Primary Flag:

• Only one site usage can be defined as the primary site usage against all addresses held against that customer. For example, if the Customer has 2 addresses both of which are defined as Bill-To addresses, only one of these addresses can be flagged as the Primary Bill-To Site. By only allowing one site usage to be defined as the Primary, it allows the database to identify the default address to be used for a particular Customer. This is particularly prevalent when passing transactions between the modules where no address is specified by in the source file. For example, if passing billing information from Lease Management to the Accounts Receivable module with no bill-to address specified against the Customers Contract, the system will default the bill-to address to the Primary Bill-To address held against the Customer for invoice addressing purposes.
• The Oracle Customer record expects that one site usage will always be defined as the Primary Site Usage. As a result, it is not possible to remove the Primary Flag on the site usage without having another site usage flagged as the Primary. If the user deselects a Site Usage to indicate it is not the Primary Site without having selected an alternate site usage on a different address as being the Primary for that usage, then the system will reinstate the Flag on the record. Also where a user selects a new site to be the primary site for a particular usage, then any other site already indicated as the primary site for that usage against that Customer record will have its Primary Flag automatically removed when the record is saved.