How can I change my customers' information and settings?

In the Customers section of My Organization settings, you can change the information and settings stored on a particular customer or organization. Note that any changes you make to a customer's or organization's name and contact information will affect how the customer appears in your records — your changes won't be visible in the advertiser's Column account.

Click the Edit button in the customer detail panel to edit an individual customer. Here's the contact and account information you can control on a given customer:

• Name

• Address

• Organization Name

• Internal ID (this is the ID correlating a customer in Column to a customer in your ad booking system if you have an integration with Column) 

And here are the settings you can control on a customer — these affect billing, affidavits, and more. Click "More Options" while viewing a customer to change these settings:

• Rates: Edit the rates associated with a particular customer by selecting a rate from the dropdown or "Add New Rate," which will redirect you to the rates table. This setting will determine what rate applies to the customers' notices when you create their invoices.

• Affidavit access: Clicking the toggle to enable affidavits before payments allows the advertiser to receive affidavits as soon as they become available.

• Upfront payment: The require upfront payment button allows you to always require upfront payment from a customer or never require upfront payment from a customer (or default to whatever settings exist on your newspaper).

• Bulk invoicing: If your newspaper is set up to issue monthly invoices, you can set up individual customers to receive monthly invoices using this toggle.

• Holds: Put a hold on a customer by clicking the toggle labeled "Put account on hold." This will prevent the customer from placing a notice in your newspaper until you remove the hold — use this for customers with a record of unpaid invoices.

Why can't I change my customer's email address?

Column uses email addresses as unique identifiers in our system, which means we can't update a customer's email address without creating a new account. If you need to change a customer's email address, please advise your customer to create a new account with the correct email address before contacting Column Support at help@column.us. Our team will transfer associated notices from the old address to the new one.

To edit a customer organization, click the Edit button in the organization detail panel. Here's the contact and account information you can control on a customer organization:

• Name

• Address

• Organization Name

• Internal ID (this is the ID correlating a customer in Column to a customer in your ad booking system if you have an integration with Column)

Currently, only a few settings are available on the customer organization level:

• Upfront payment: As with individual customers, you can decide to always require upfront payment from an organization, never require it, or default to the setting on your newspaper. 

• Bulk invoicing: If your newspaper is set up to issue monthly invoices, you can set up customer organizations to receive monthly invoices using this toggle.

• Affidavit access: Clicking the toggle to enable affidavits before payments allows all members of this organization to receive affidavits as soon as they become available.

As indicated above, certain settings can be configured for both individuals and organizations. Depending on the setting, you may need to set preferences on different levels to achieve the desired effect.

• Upfront payment: Individual settings override organization settings. If you want to require upfront payment from all members of an organization, set "Always require" on the organization. If one member of an organization doesn't require upfront payment, set "Never require" on that individual customer.

• Internal IDs: The order of operations for internal IDs (or "account numbers") varies by newspaper because each paper's integration is slightly different. Check with your account representative to determine whether you should set IDs on individuals or organizations. We recommend setting IDs on both individuals and organizations to ensure notices sync to the right accounts.

• Bulk invoicing: Organization settings override individual settings. If a customer belongs to an organization, turn on bulk invoicing at the organization level. If a customer does not belong to an organization, turn on bulk invoicing at the individual level.

Need to keep track of information about specific customers or organizations? You can use the Notes feature to jot down details such as a customer's credit status, preferred point of contact, or whatever else you need to remember when working with that customer. Like all customer information in Column, notes are visible to only publishers and Column staff — not customers themselves.

Want to learn more about customizing settings for your customers and their organizations? Check out this webinar where we take a deep dive: