Contact addresses: an account's billing and shipping addresses

A contact address is one entry in an account's address book — a billing address, a delivery address, or one that serves as both — that sales, service and purchasing documents pick up as their billing and shipping address. Every contact address belongs to one account; you add them after the account exists, and from then on the default one fills in automatically on new orders, invoices, delivery orders, service orders, bills and purchase orders, and fills gaps on quotes and opportunities.

Overview

An account carries its own billing and shipping address fields, which is enough for a customer with one location. A contact address is what you add when that is not enough: a customer with a head office and several delivery sites, a supplier who bills from one place and ships from another, or a business registered for GST in more than one state.

Each contact address holds:

• What it is — a Name you recognise it by, its Address Type (Billing, Shipping or Both) and whether it Is Default.
• Who it belongs to — the Account (required), and optionally a Contact (the person at that address) and a Branch.
• Where it is — Street, City, State, Region, Postal Code and Country.
• How it is taxed — for businesses in India, the GSTIN, GST Registration Type and Place Of Supply that apply at that address.

When to use it

• A customer wants goods delivered somewhere other than where the invoice goes.
• A customer or supplier has several sites and you want to choose the right one on each document instead of retyping it.
• A party trades from several Indian states and holds a separate GSTIN for each — record each state's GSTIN on its own address so documents and GST returns carry the right one.
• A branch needs a postal address: a branch's Address is a contact address (see Branches).

If the account has only one address, its own Billing Address and Shipping Address fields are enough; documents fall back to them when the account has no default contact address.

How xMatix handles it

Default addresses fill documents. When you raise a document for an account, xMatix looks for the account's contact address marked Is Default: a Billing or Both address for the billing side, a Shipping or Both address for the shipping side. How it uses that address depends on the document:

In every case xMatix only fills what is still empty. If you pick a different address in the document's billing or shipping address lookup, or type any part of the address yourself, your entry is kept.

On a lead, choosing an existing account fills the lead's City, State and Postal Code from the account, using its default billing contact address for any of those the account leaves blank.

The address text is copied. The document copies the street, city, state, region, postal code and country onto its own fields and builds the one-line address from them. Changing a contact address later does not change documents that were already raised from it.

Per-address GST (India). On sales documents — quotes, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service orders and delivery orders — the billing contact address comes first when xMatix works out the tax context on save:

• Place of supply comes from the billing address, else from the account.
• GSTIN comes from the billing address, else from the account (opportunities take the place of supply but not the GSTIN).
• GST Registration Type on the billing address, when set, decides the tax supply type instead of the account's. Out Of Scope and Non GST Supply make the supply Exempt; Overseas and Deemed Exports make it an export; Special Economic Zone (SEZ) makes it SEZ; otherwise the supply is within or outside the state depending on whether the place of supply matches the branch's source of supply.

Values already on the document are never replaced. Purchase documents (bills and purchase orders) take their tax context from the supplier account only; their contact addresses are used for the address alone.

GST returns. A GSTIN recorded on a contact address is recognised by the GST statements: when a reconciliation row carries a GSTIN that is not on any account, xMatix names the party from the account that owns the address with that GSTIN. If your organisation runs a GSTIN verification integration, it can record a verification result against the address as well as against the account, and the GSTR-1 buyer-GSTIN warnings read both.

Your own branch address prints on invoices. The printed invoice takes your company's street, city, state, postal code and country from the selling branch's Address contact address.

Prerequisites

• The account exists — a contact address cannot be saved without one. See Accounts.
• To link a person, the contact exists on that account.
• You have access to contact addresses (see Permissions).

Procedure

Step 1 — Add an address to an account

1. Open the account and go to the Contact & Address Info tab.
2. On the addresses list, select New.
3. Enter a Name that tells the addresses apart, such as Head office or Pune warehouse.
4. Choose the Address Type: Billing, Shipping or Both.
5. Check that Account shows the right account, and pick a Contact if the address belongs to a particular person.
6. Fill Street, City, State, Region, Postal Code and Country.
7. For a business in India, fill GSTIN, GST Registration Type and Place Of Supply if they differ from the account's.
8. Switch Is Default on if documents should use this address automatically (see Step 3).
9. Select Save. The address appears on the account's addresses list and in the address lookups of documents.

Step 2 — Find an address

• From an account: the Contact & Address Info tab lists that account's addresses.
• As a list: where your navigation includes Contact Addresses, the list shows Name, Account, Address Type, Street, Postal Code, City, State, Country and Is Default. Use search, filters and column sorting to narrow it — for example, filter Account to see one customer's addresses, or Is Default to check which address each account defaults to.

Step 3 — Set the default address

Open the address, select Edit, switch Is Default on and save.

xMatix does not switch other addresses off for you. If the account already has a default address of the same kind, open it and switch Is Default off — otherwise the documents may pick either one. A practical pattern is one default Both address, or one default Billing and one default Shipping address.

Step 4 — Use an address on a document

On an order, invoice, quote or other document, choose the account first; the default address fills in as described in How xMatix handles it. To use a different site, pick it in the document's billing or shipping address lookup before you fill the address fields by hand. Because xMatix never overwrites address fields you have already filled, clear the copied fields first if you switch to another address after the first one has filled in.

Step 5 — Change an address

Open the address, select Edit, change what you need and save. The change applies to documents raised from now on; documents already raised keep the address they copied.

Step 6 — Copy or delete an address

• Clone creates a copy of the address, which is a quick start for a second site of the same customer. Rename it and change what differs.
• Delete removes an address from lists and lookups. Deleted records go to the recycle bin, so they can be restored — see Data lifecycle. Documents already raised keep the address text they copied.

Step 7 — Work with addresses on mobile

In the xMatix mobile app, the New form for a contact address asks for Name (required), Address Type, Account, Branch and Is Default, with Street, City, State, Country, Region and Postal Code in an Address section. The record view shows the same details plus GSTIN and GST Registration Type, with Edit and Delete in its header.

When you raise an order offline, the app can work out the GST supply type only if the billing contact address has been synced to the device; otherwise it leaves the tax context for the server to set when the order syncs.

Fields

Business rules

• Account is required. An address without an account cannot be saved.
• Default resolution. Documents look for the account's addresses with Is Default on: Billing or Both for billing, Shipping or Both for shipping. Nothing stops two addresses of the same kind from both being default; when that happens xMatix uses whichever it finds first, so keep exactly one.
• No overwrite. Automatic filling never replaces an address lookup, address field, GSTIN or place of supply that already has a value on the document.
• When filling happens. Sales orders, invoices and purchase orders fill their addresses on first save only. Bills, delivery orders and service orders also fill on later saves while the address is empty. Quotes and opportunities fill when the account is chosen and on save.
• Copy, not link, for the text. Documents copy the address text. Editing or deleting a contact address does not change documents already raised.
• Partner onboarding. When a partner onboarding application is activated, xMatix creates a Both address marked Is Default on the new partner account from the application's address, city, state, PIN code and GST number, with Country set to India — unless the account already has a default address or the application has no street or city.
• Customer portal. Shoppers in a commerce storefront can add and delete their own addresses from their account area. These are the same contact address records. Adding one as the default there switches the account's other default addresses off, and an address added without a type is saved as Both.
• Account merge. Merging accounts does not move contact addresses; they stay on the account they were recorded against.

Example

A furniture distributor sells to Riverbend Traders, which has its head office in Pune and a warehouse in Nashik, both in Maharashtra, and a second registration in Gujarat for its Surat showroom.

1. On the Riverbend Traders account, on Contact & Address Info, the sales coordinator adds Head office – Pune: Address Type Billing, Is Default on, Pune street and postal code, GST Registration Type GST Registered- Regular, Place Of Supply Maharashtra.
2. They add Nashik warehouse: Address Type Shipping, Is Default on.
3. They add Surat showroom: Address Type Both, Is Default off, with the Gujarat GSTIN and Place Of Supply Gujarat.
4. A new sales order for Riverbend Traders fills the head office as billing address and the Nashik warehouse as shipping address on save. The order's place of supply is Maharashtra, matching the Pune branch, so the supply is Within State.
5. For an order the Surat showroom pays for, the coordinator picks Surat showroom in both address lookups before saving. The order takes the Gujarat GSTIN and place of supply, and the supply becomes Outside State.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox, open a test customer account that has no contact addresses and its own billing address filled in.

1. Add a Shipping address named Practice dock with Is Default on.
2. Raise a new sales order for the account and save it without touching the address fields.

Expected result: the order's billing address comes from the account's own billing fields (there is no default billing contact address), and its shipping address is Practice dock. Now add a default Billing address and raise a second order: its billing address is the new contact address, while the first order is unchanged.

Quick reference

• Add addresses from the account's Contact & Address Info tab with New.
• Address Type: Billing, Shipping or Both — Both serves either side.
• Keep one Is Default address per side per account; xMatix does not switch the old one off.
• Documents only fill what is empty — pick a different address before typing.
• Orders, invoices and purchase orders fill on first save; quotes and opportunities prefer the account's own address fields.
• The billing address's GSTIN, place of supply and registration type beat the account's on sales documents.
• Editing an address never changes documents already raised.
• Deleted addresses go to the recycle bin.

Permissions

Access is set per security profile on the Contact Address entity, under Setup → Access Control → Profiles → Entity Permissions (see Security profiles). In the standard profiles, Standard User, System Admin, Sales, Sales Executive, Sales Manager and Service have full access — read, create, edit and delete. A user whose profile cannot read contact addresses does not see the account's addresses list and cannot pick an address on a document; a user who can read but not create or edit sees the addresses but no New or Edit.

Configuration

• Where addresses appear. On the web, the addresses list sits on the account's Contact & Address Info tab. The standard Partner Onboarding Settings app also lists Contact Addresses under Partner Masters, on web and mobile. Administrators can add the entity to other apps — see Apps, entities and records.
• City, State and Country picklists. These are picklists your administrator maintains, so you can add the cities, states and countries you trade in. GST Registration Type uses the fixed values in Fields; the tax logic depends on them, so do not rename them.
• Layouts and list views. The address form, the record view, the mobile forms and the Contact Address list view can be changed in Studio like any other entity — see Customizing xMatix.
• Branch addresses. To set the address printed as the seller on invoices, open the branch and choose its Address — see Branches.
• GSTIN verification. Verifying address GSTINs against the GST network needs an integration your organisation sets up; without one, address GSTINs show as not verified in GSTR-1. See GSTR-1.

Common problems

The address did not fill in on my order

The account has no contact address with Is Default on of the right type — a Billing or Both address for billing, a Shipping or Both address for shipping — and its own address fields are empty too. Or you had already typed part of the address before saving, so xMatix kept your entry. Mark the right address as default, or pick it in the address lookup.

The order used the wrong address

The account has two default addresses of the same kind, and xMatix picked the other one. Open the account's addresses and leave only one default per side. On the order, pick the right address in the lookup and correct the address fields.

A quote shows the account's address, not my default contact address

Quotes and opportunities take the account's own address fields first and use the default contact address only for parts the account leaves blank. Pick the contact address in the quote's address lookup, or clear the account's own address fields if the contact addresses are meant to be the source.

The tax on the invoice is for the wrong state

The billing address's Place Of Supply or GST Registration Type — or the account's, when the address has none — does not match the customer's registration at that site. Correct the address, then check the invoice: values already on the invoice are not replaced, so clear its Place Of Supply or GSTIN and save to pick up the corrected value.

I changed an address but old documents still show the old one

Documents copy the address when they are raised. Edit the address on each open document if it must change.

I cannot save a new address

The Account is empty. Every contact address must belong to an account — pick the account, or open the account and add the address from its Contact & Address Info tab.

Common questions

What is the difference between the account's address fields and a contact address?

The account's Billing Address and Shipping Address fields hold one address of each kind on the account record itself. Contact addresses are separate records, as many as you need, each with its own type, default flag and GST details. Sales orders, invoices, delivery orders, service orders, bills and purchase orders prefer the default contact address and fall back to the account's fields. Quotes and opportunities do the reverse: they start from the account's fields and use the default contact address to fill gaps.

Should I use Both or separate Billing and Shipping addresses?

Use Both when the customer is billed and receives goods at the same place — one default Both address fills both sides. Use separate Billing and Shipping addresses, each marked default, when the invoice and the goods go to different places. You can mix them: non-default addresses of any type stay available in the lookups for one-off documents.

Does a contact address need its own GSTIN?

Only when the party is registered at that address under a different GSTIN from the account's — typically a customer registered in several states. Leave it blank otherwise; the sales document then takes the account's GSTIN. The same goes for Place Of Supply and GST Registration Type: fill them on the address only where they differ.

Can I delete an address that documents have used?

Yes. The address leaves lists and lookups and goes to the recycle bin, and documents that used it keep the address text they copied. Consider switching Is Default off instead if you only want to stop new documents from using it.

Related topics

• Accounts
• Quotes
• Working opportunities through the pipeline
• Delivery orders
• Branches
• GSTR-1
• Data lifecycle
• Contact Address reference
• Contact — entity reference
• Account — entity reference