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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived) / Can you increase or le...
Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived)

Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

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Posted on by baxter05 2,680

I'm sure this has been asked before so my apologies.

Is there any way to increase the characters or lengthen the character field for the Customer ID?  Right now you are only allowed 13 characters for the Customer ID.

My company would love to have it closer to 20 characters as they separate the customers by state.

Example:

State:  AL

Customer Name:  Billy Bob Mobile home

They would like to initiate something that looks like this -

AL.BillyBob.MobileHome (22 characters)

They have previously used increments beginning with the state such as:

AL1000

AL2000

ETC

However, after 12 yrs the numbers are no longer consecutive to match the alphabet and the customer names are no longer in alpha/numeric order and my employer would like to change that.

We are looking at ways to modify the current customer ID so that we can put the customers in ALPHA/Numeric order but 13 characters are not enough.

Thank you for your feedback - currently using GP 2010, hoping to upgrade soon.

 

*This post is locked for comments

  • Victoria Yudin Profile Picture
    Victoria Yudin 22,766 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    Tim,

    Re-reading Bradley's answer, I think he is suggesting changing this both in GP (using Modifier) and SQL.  Since I would never (ever) suggest doing this, I have not tried it and do not know if it would work.  Hopefully someone with more Dex/SQL knowledge can give you some more definitive answers on this.  

  • Richard Wheeler Profile Picture
    Richard Wheeler 75,730 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    You never want to change the definition of any GP table. You may not see the effect right away but you may corrupt future GP upgrades and they compare table structures as part of the upgrade process and if it finds a mismatch the upgrade will fail. Using GP Extender just allows you add fields and you can store whatever information you want in these additional fields. Best to work within the 15 character limit. The hardest thing will be deciding on the structure of your customer ID's abd then sticking to it. As usual, Victoria has a top notch suggestion!

  • Tim W Profile Picture
    Tim W 2,925 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    This sparked a clarifying question I had on this scenario for Bradley or Victoria.

    My understanding is that the table definition(s) in Dynamics.dic which would have Customer ID at 15 can't be updated such that a change to the SQL definition will cause a miss match and a retrieve error as the field in the table buffer (still 15) wont match the database field which I believe forces an error.

    Also I would thing the save operation from the form would truncate any value greater then 15 regardless.

    I've worked on this assumption in GP for along time so was wondering if the size of a field used by the client really can be worked around as described.

    Thanks

    Tim

  • baxter05 Profile Picture
    baxter05 2,680 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    Thank you all for your responses.  I believe that Victoria's answer is the best case scenario.

  • Verified answer
    Victoria Yudin Profile Picture
    Victoria Yudin 22,766 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    Pam,

    Even if you were to increase the size of the field in all the SQL tables that have the Customer ID (no easy feat, imho), when you go to upgrade, this will either (a) best scenario - be completely wiped out and your ID's truncated back to the max of 15 characters or (b) worst scenario and probably more likely - cause your upgrade to fail.  I believe you would also run into interim issues with anything like activating new modules, using any 3rd party products that use the Customer ID, existing reporting, etc.

    I would recommend using the Customer Modifier tool (free as part of the PSTL tools) to change all of your existing customer IDs to something that works better with the data you currently have and gives you room for growth.  Maybe something like:

    ST-XXXXX-YYYY

    where ST is the state, XXXXX are the first five letters of he customers name, YYYY are numbers.  So, with your example, it would be AL-BILLY-0001.  This would give you room for growth for up to 9999 of the same first 5 letters in the customer name per state.  If you think 9999 is not enough, you could go with YYYYY.  

  • Richard Wheeler Profile Picture
    Richard Wheeler 75,730 on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    The length of the RM00101.CUSTNMBR field is 15 so that would be the maximum you could expand the field. Now you could use GP Extender and add any number of fields of any length. But these fields cannot be the main customer ID field.

  • Bradley Gehrls Profile Picture
    Bradley Gehrls on at
    Re: Can you increase or lengthen the Customer ID?

    Hello Pam,

    Thank you for using Microsoft Online Communities.  I understand that you are wondering if there is a way to expand the amount of characters that are being displayed in the Customer ID field in the Customer Maintenance window.

    The only way that I was able to think that we could change the length of the Customer ID field is if you are registered for VBA modifier.  This will allow you to alter the window included changing field sizes.  

    With this you must be aware that there are also field limits in SQL so if you exceed these limits that the table can hold for the field SQL will truncate your values that you have entered.  Usually the SQL values are larger than what is allowed in GP, so this should not be an issue unless you are going to some real large value like 50 or more.

    If you have any other questions please let me know.

    Best regards,

    Brad G

    Microsoft Dynamics GP

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