Sales Areas

A sales area is a grouping of related customers. Sales areas can be grouped in a hierarchical manner producing the effect of a tree structure. The following example illustrates the effect of this hierarchical design:

Hierarchical diagram of sales area tree structure

The above tree structure is derived by the relationship of the sales areas codes shown after the area names. As you can see each tier of the structure as you move from left to right has two extra characters in the area code. We call this the depth of the tree. A tree can be up to 5 tiers deep.

When you add a sales area to the system the sales area code dictates its position in the tree structure. You can only create a new sales area if it is either a branch (child) of an existing sales area or a first tier sales area (ie. a two character area code that designates the start of a new tier). While the above tree structure uses numeric area codes any two character alphanumeric combination can be used to define an area.

The importance of the tree structure is threefold when using Acumen:

• The structure is used visually as an aid in locating information

• The structure allows the level of detail shown in reports to be scaled

• Selection of a range of records is made easier