Account groups

An account group is a named set of customer or partner accounts that other features target in one step: instead of naming every dealer on a price list, a discount group, a tax group or a trade scheme, you name the group, and xMatix checks whether the account on the document belongs to it. You set groups up once in the Sales or Procurement settings, keep their members current, and then pick them on the records they scope.

Overview

A group has three parts, each on its own tab of the group's record page:

• Rules — conditions on account fields (for example Billing State equals Gujarat) that can build the member list for you.
• Members — the accounts that belong to the group. This is the list every feature actually reads.
• Details — the group's name, type, description and how its rules combine.

Members come from two sources, and one group can use both. You can add accounts by hand on the Members tab, or you can let Process Members add every account that matches the rules. A rule-built list does not update itself: it changes only when someone runs Process Members again.

The Account Group Type decides which features can use a group. Price lists only recognise Price groups, discount groups only Discount groups, tax groups only Tax groups, and trade schemes only Scheme and Exclude Scheme groups. A group of the wrong type is not rejected when you pick it; it simply matches no one.

When to use it

Use an account group when the same commercial treatment applies to many accounts and you expect the list to change:

• a dealer tier that gets its own price list (Price group as the price list's Customer Account Group);
• a set of customers on a contract discount (Discount group on the discount group);
• selling companies that share a tax treatment (Tax group as the tax group's Partner Account Group);
• the outlets a promotion targets, or the ones it must leave out (Scheme and Exclude Scheme groups on a trade scheme);
• the outlets a visit plan or route covers, the companies a selling-scope mapping applies to, or the participants in an incentive plan.

If only one account is involved, name the account directly on the record instead.

How xMatix handles it

When a feature checks a group, it looks for a member row that links the account to the group. Price lists, tax groups and trade schemes count only members whose Is Active box is on, and only in a group of their own type. Discount groups also insist on their type but count a member whether or not it is active. Members are matched when the document is priced, taxed or checked for schemes, so changes to a group affect documents processed after the change, not documents already saved.

Process Members rebuilds the rule-based part of the list:

1. It reads the group's conditions in their order on the Rules tab.
2. It finds every account that satisfies them, combined according to Rule Success Criteria.
3. It adds one active member for each of those accounts.
4. It removes the members that the previous Process Members run created.

Members you added by hand are never removed by a run. If an account is both added by hand and matched by the rules, it appears twice; that does no harm to matching, but it is untidy.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Settings entry of the Sales app or the Procurement app, and permission to create account groups.
• For a rule-based group, the account fields you want to test are filled in on the accounts. A condition on an empty field matches nothing.
• For a scheme-scoped group, the value Scheme has been added to the Account Group Type field (see Configuration).

Procedure

Step 1 — Open the account group list

In the Sales app, select Settings, then Account Group. (The same list is also in the Procurement app's Settings.) The list shows each group's Name, Description, Account Group Type, Dynamic Member Type and Rule Success Criteria. Use the view switcher to see only Price, Discount or Incentive groups.

Step 2 — Create the group

1. Select New.
2. Enter a Name and choose the Account Group Type.
3. To build members from rules, set Dynamic Member Type to Field Filter and, under Field Filter Criteria, choose a Rule Success Criteria. For a group you fill by hand, leave both empty.
4. Add a Description that says who belongs in the group.
5. Save.

The group's record page opens on the Rules tab.

Step 3 — Add members by hand

1. Open the Members tab.
2. Select New, pick the Account, and tick Is Active. The form does not tick it for you, and price lists, tax groups and trade schemes ignore a member whose Is Active is not ticked.
3. Save. The account appears in the members list.

Repeat for each account. Each row in the members list has Edit and Delete. To take an account out of the group, either select Delete on its row or edit the row and turn Is Active off. An inactive member stays on the list but no longer counts for price lists, tax groups, trade schemes, selling scope, online-store pricing, coupon campaigns or incentive enrolment. Discount groups, visit plans, package components and scheme budgets still count it, so delete the row when the account must leave the group everywhere.

Turning Is Active off only lasts for members you added by hand. A member that Process Members created is replaced by a fresh, active row on the next run, so to keep a rule-matched account out, change the rules instead.

Step 4 — Define membership rules

The Rules tab holds the Account Group Rules card. Each condition is one row with three columns — field, operator and value.

1. Open the Rules tab and select Add condition at the top right of the card. A new row opens ready to edit, set to the first account field in alphabetical order and the operator Equals.
2. In the row, choose the account field to test. The list holds every visible account field, including custom fields, sorted by label.
3. Choose the operator. Only the operators that suit the field are offered (see Condition (Rules tab)).
4. Enter or pick the value. The value control follows the field: a switch for a yes/no field, a date picker for a date, a number box for a number, and a searchable list for a lookup or picklist. For In list, Not in list, Includes (any) and Excludes (all) you can pick several values.
5. Add more conditions as needed. Drag a row by its handle on the left to change the order. Select the pencil on a row to edit it again, or the bin to remove it and confirm with Delete.
6. Select Save at the bottom of the card. You see Membership rules saved. The Save and Cancel buttons appear only once you have changed something; Cancel discards your changes and reloads the saved conditions.

Saving the rules does not change the members. Rules are only applied in the next step.

Step 5 — Build the members

On the group's record page, select Process Members. You see Running Process Members... and then the message Action Executed. That message means the rebuild has been queued, not that it has finished: it runs in the background. Open the Members tab and refresh it after a short while to see the result.

Run Process Members again whenever you change the rules, or when accounts have changed in ways the rules test (a new dealer is created, an account moves to another state). Nothing reruns it for you.

Step 6 — Use the group

Open the record you want to scope and pick the group in its account group field:

Other records also accept a group, and these do not check its type: selling-scope mappings (customer and selling-company groups), stores (selling-company group), visit plans (the visits are created for the group's members), package components (selling-company group), coupon campaigns (Account Group: only members can redeem the code) and the online store, which prefers a price list whose Customer Account Group contains the signed-in customer over the general list. Incentive plans use the group's members for enrolment whatever its type, but performance tracking for a plan or target scoped by an account group only counts accounts in an active membership of a Scheme group. See selling scope and incentive plans.

Step 7 — Change or remove a group

Edit the fields on the Details tab in place, or select Edit in the page header. To retire a group, first remove it from every price list, discount group, tax group and scheme that names it, then select Delete. Clone copies the group's details only — not its rules or members.

Fields

Account group

The Details tab also shows Created By, Created Date, Modified By and Modified Date. The page header shows Account Group Type and Rule Success Criteria as summary figures.

Member

Condition (Rules tab)

The operators offered for each kind of field:

Contains matches when the value appears anywhere in the field. Includes (any) matches when the field contains at least one of the chosen values; Excludes (all) matches when it contains none of them — use these two with multi-select picklists.

Business rules

• Field Filter needs a criteria. Saving a group whose Dynamic Member Type is Field Filter without a Rule Success Criteria fails with Selection of Rule Success Criteria is mandatory if the Dynamic Member Type is Field Filter!
• No conditions, or no criteria, means everyone. If Process Members runs on a group with no conditions or an empty Rule Success Criteria, every account becomes a member.
• Any Rule Is Met adds an account that satisfies at least one condition. All Rules Are Met (every condition) is supported but switched off in the standard value list.
• Conditions run in their on-screen order. Saving the Rules tab numbers the conditions 1, 2, 3… from top to bottom. Reordering or deleting a condition renumbers the rest.
• Custom logic (only when an administrator has added Custom Logic Is Met) combines the conditions by those numbers with AND, OR and brackets, for example 1 AND (2 OR 3). NOT is not supported, a number with no matching condition counts as not met, and an empty Rule Success Custom Logic behaves like All Rules Are Met. Because the numbers follow the on-screen order, check the expression after you reorder or delete a condition.
• Empty fields and negative operators. Not equal, Not in list and Excludes (all) also match accounts where the field is empty. On a custom field, an empty value also counts as less than any value you compare it with.
• Inactive accounts are not skipped. The rebuild tests only your conditions. To keep inactive accounts out, add the condition Active Equals true.
• A run replaces the previous run. Members created by the last run are removed; members added by hand stay. Edits you made to a rule-built member, such as turning Is Active off, are lost, because the run adds a new active row for every matching account.
• Duplicates are not checked. Nothing stops the same account being a member twice, whether added by hand twice or by hand and by a run.
• Report-based membership is not supported. A group whose Dynamic Member Type is Report Data is skipped by Process Members.
• Type must match exactly. The type is compared as stored text, so a type that differs from the expected one in spelling or capitals matches no one.

Example

Your company sells through about 200 dealers. The 35 dealers in Gujarat get a regional price list.

1. You create the group Gujarat dealers, type Price, Dynamic Member Type Field Filter, Rule Success Criteria Any Rule Is Met.
2. On Rules, you add one condition: Billing State Equals Gujarat, and save.
3. You select Process Members. A minute later the Members tab lists the 35 Gujarat accounts.
4. You add one dealer from just across the border by hand on Members.
5. On the price list Gujarat 2026, you set Customer Account Group to Gujarat dealers.
6. A new order for one of those dealers picks Gujarat 2026 automatically when no price list is entered.
7. Next month a new Gujarat dealer is created. You run Process Members again: the dealer is added, the 35 earlier rule-built members are replaced by a fresh set of 36, and your hand-added dealer stays.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox:

1. Create an account group Training – Mumbai, type Discount, Dynamic Member Type Field Filter, Rule Success Criteria Any Rule Is Met.
2. Add a condition Billing City Equals Mumbai, save the rules, and run Process Members.
3. Add one account from another city by hand on Members.
4. Change the condition to Pune, save, and run Process Members again.

Expected result: after step 2 the members are your Mumbai accounts. After step 4 they are your Pune accounts plus the one account you added by hand — the Mumbai accounts are gone.

Quick reference

• The Members tab is what features read; the Rules tab only feeds Process Members.
• Saving rules changes nothing until you run Process Members.
• Hand-added members survive every rebuild; rule-built members are replaced each time.
• Price → price lists, Discount → discount groups, Tax → tax groups, Scheme / Exclude Scheme → trade schemes.
• A group of the wrong type is accepted on the record but matches no one.
• Field Filter needs a Rule Success Criteria; an empty criteria or no conditions means every account.
• Tick Is Active on every member you add by hand; the New form leaves it empty.
• Turn Is Active off to suspend a hand-added member without deleting it; a run re-activates rule-built ones.
• Toggle a yes/no condition's switch before saving — untouched, it stores no value.
• Conditions are numbered top to bottom on save; custom logic follows those numbers.

Permissions

Access is granted per entity in the user's security profile: Account Group (the group), Account Group Member (the Members tab) and Account Group Rule (the Rules tab) each need read, and create, edit or delete as required. In the standard profiles, Sales, Sales Manager, Sales Executive, Service, Standard User and System Admin can work with groups, members and rules.

Process Members is a server action and is granted separately. In the standard setup only the Standard User and System Admin profiles have it; the sales profiles do not. To let sales managers rebuild groups, grant the action on their profile.

Configuration

Common problems

The group has no members after I saved the rules

Saving rules does not build members. Select Process Members on the group, wait for the background run, and refresh the Members tab.

Process Members added every account

The group has no conditions, or its Rule Success Criteria is empty. Add conditions, choose a criteria, and run Process Members again — the run replaces the previous rule-built members.

A condition matches nothing

The field is empty on the accounts, the value is spelled differently, or the operator does not suit the field. For lookups, pick the value from the list rather than typing it.

A yes/no condition matches nothing, or matches every account

A new yes/no condition shows its switch as False but stores no value until you toggle it. Left untouched, Equals matches no account and Not equal matches every account. Edit the row, switch it on and off again (or on, for True), and save the rules before running Process Members.

My custom logic picks the wrong accounts after I changed the rules

Custom logic refers to conditions by their position, and saving the Rules tab renumbers them in on-screen order. After a reorder or a deletion, rewrite Rule Success Custom Logic to match the new positions and run Process Members again.

I get "Every condition needs a field." when I save the rules

One of the rows has no field selected. Pick a field on that row, or remove the row, and select Save again.

I get "Failed to save membership rules." or "Failed to load membership rules."

The rules were not saved or could not be read; nothing on the Rules tab changed on the server. Refresh the page and try again. If saving keeps failing, check that your security profile lets you create, edit and delete Account Group Rule records.

The price list (or discount, tax group, scheme) ignores my group

Check the group's Account Group Type: it must be Price for price lists, Discount for discount groups, Tax for tax groups and Scheme for trade schemes. Then check that the account is on the Members tab with Is Active on, and that you put the group in the right field — customer and partner (selling company) groups are separate fields.

An account I added by hand is ignored by the price list, tax group or scheme

Open the Members tab and edit the account's row. If Is Active is not ticked, tick it and save: these features only count ticked members, and the New member form leaves the box empty.

I switched a member off, but it is active again

The member was created by Process Members, and a later run replaced it with a new active row. Rule-built members follow the rules: change the conditions so the account no longer matches, then run Process Members again.

I can't pick Scheme as the type

Scheme is not in the standard type list. An administrator adds it to the Account Group Type values (see Configuration).

I get "Selection of Rule Success Criteria is mandatory if the Dynamic Member Type is Field Filter!"

Choose a Rule Success Criteria, or clear Dynamic Member Type if you maintain the group by hand.

Common questions

Does the group update itself when accounts change?

No. A rule-based group is a snapshot taken when Process Members last ran. Hand-added members change only when you change them. If your rules test fields that change often, make running Process Members part of your routine — for example after onboarding new dealers. Documents that were priced or taxed before the rebuild keep what they got; only documents processed afterwards see the new membership.

Can one group be used by several features?

Only by features that look for the same type. A Price group works on price lists in either the customer or the partner field, but a discount group will not recognise it. If you need the same accounts for prices and discounts, create two groups with the same rules and different types, and run Process Members on both.

Can I mix rules and hand-picked accounts?

Yes. Keep Dynamic Member Type Field Filter and add the extra accounts on Members. Each Process Members run replaces only the members it created, so your additions stay. To exclude an account the rules pick up, refine the conditions instead — a deleted rule-built member comes back on the next run.

What happens to members when I delete a group?

Deleting a group does not delete its rules or member rows; it removes the group itself. Remove the group from every price list, discount group, tax group, scheme and plan that names it first, because those records keep pointing at it. If you only want to stop using a group for a while, take it off those records instead of deleting it, so you can put it back with its members intact.

Related topics

• Pricing, discounts and taxes
• Trade schemes
• Selling scope
• Incentive plans
• Accounts
• Account Group entity reference
• Account Group Member entity reference
• Account Group Rule entity reference
• Account — entity reference