Loading new Customers or Ship-to from Offline

["Eric A. Wolf" <eric_a_wolf@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the list,
Has anyone come up with a way to load customers or ship-tos as part of a 
nightly process ie. scheduled offline load?

My customer wants to create a function to allow users (not only in the Credit 
dept) to be able to load customers/shiptos in a "batch" file and post the data 
using the Offline functions after having cleaned up/formatted the data.  The 
reason for this request is to standardize the addresses to follow a more 
stringent format.  We are trying to use a format that follows the USPS 
standards and also use a product called PER/ZIP that will verify the address 
and return the Zip+4 postal codes, as well as, correct any spelling or 
punctuation errors. FYI - it is a neat tool for those that are having a similar 
problem.

MAPICS requires the first address line to be filled in, however, the USPS 
standard is that the line directly above the City/State/Postal code to be the 
delivery address.   To add to this problem, the PER/ZIP product wants to know 
which positions in the file being verified has the Delivery and Seconday 
address.  My idea is to always use the Address line 3 for delivery address 
(could be a PO Box or a street address).

My solution so far has been this: Bill-to Address Line 1 = ATTN: ACCOUNTS 
PAYABLE
                                                Ship-to Address Line1= 
RECEIVING DEPT.
This satisfies the MAPICS standard but to resolve the 
spelling/punctuation/validation problem, I cannot use the user exit since the 
Credit dept is the only one who can activate the customer, apply credit limits, 
etc.  However, allowing others to create the customer alleviates duplicate 
entry into a Lotus database.

Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated...

Eric A. Wolf
Independent MAPICS Consultant