How to Add a New Customer to Epicor (Order to Invoice)
A Practical Guide to Customer Setup, Sales Orders, Pack Slips, and Invoicing in Epicor Kinetic
If you're wondering how to add a new customer to Epicor, the short answer is this. Open Customer Maintenance, create the record with a unique ID, name, address, payment terms and ship-to, set the credit limit, and save. That takes about ten minutes.
The customer record is only the first step of order to cash, though. A wrong payment term or an invalid ship-to doesn't fail on the spot. It shows up weeks later as a disputed invoice, a pack slip that has to be redone, or a customer who looks overdue when they aren't.
This guide covers the whole path in Kinetic, from customer to sales order to pack slip to invoice. Along the way it covers how to copy a sales order in Epicor, how to do an exact duplicate order, and how to correct or update a pack slip.
Why the customer record matters more than it looks
McKinsey's research on order to cash points to the front of the process as the place where problems start. In its May 2022 study, Finding hidden value with order-to-cash optimization, McKinsey makes three points:
O2C is one of the most complex G&A processes, with a cost base of roughly 1 to 3 percent of revenue.
One B2B industrial manufacturer found leakage across multiple O2C steps worth 3 to 5 percent of EBITDA.
Validating customer details as early as possible, and tightening order holds and credit checks, are practical internal fixes. One organization cut order and credit holds by half this way.
McKinsey's January 2025 piece, Gain transformation momentum early by optimizing working capital, is even more direct about customer setup. It says onboarding at contract setup helps companies avoid issues later. The levers it names are standard payment terms, customer credit checks, credit limits and clean master data. The same article estimates that focusing on process mapping, technology and performance management could improve payables and receivables balances by 30 percent or more within weeks. That figure comes from a sample of 50 companies, so treat it as directional.
In Epicor terms, standard terms, credit limits and clean addresses are all fields on the customer record. Getting them right at creation is cheaper than fixing them after the first invoice.
How to add a new customer to Epicor Kinetic: step by step
Before you start, gather:
The legal name and billing address.
The ship-to address or addresses.
The payment terms you agreed.
The credit limit.
The accounts payable contact and an email for invoices.
The salesperson or territory.
Steps:
Open Customer Maintenance. A common path is Sales Management → Customer Relationship Management → Setup → Customer, as shown in this Kinetic walkthrough. You can also search for "Customer Maintenance". Epicor's own Understanding Customer Maintenance video covers the main fields.
Create the record. Use the New menu and select New Customer, then enter a unique Customer ID and the customer name. Agree an ID convention with your team first. IDs are hard to change later and they appear everywhere downstream.
Enter the main address. Practitioners at one Epicor shop recommend putting the physical street address on line 1 if you use carrier manifests, with suite or department details on lines 2 and 3. Accurate addresses also matter for tax and delivery, as Hyperbots explains in why addresses on invoices and POs matter.
Assign territory and salesperson. Use Get Territory to default the territory, then set the salesperson. Add phone and email. Use the email the customer's AP team wants invoices sent to.
Complete the Contacts tab. Add the buyer, the AP contact and the receiving contact if they differ. Collectors will thank you later.
Set billing defaults. On the Billing tab, set Terms, Ship Via and, if it differs, the Bill To address. Terms matter most. Epicor derives invoice due dates from the terms on the invoice, which normally default from the customer record, and those dates drive aging and collections priority. Hyperbots' guide to variations in payment terms is written from the payables side, but the mechanics of net days and early-pay discounts are the same.
Set credit limits and hold status. The credit detail on the customer record is where you define the credit limit and place the customer on or off credit hold. A held customer's orders can still be entered, but they stop until someone with authority releases them.
Add Ship To addresses. Create at least one valid Ship To. Community reports note that some Kinetic releases raise a "main Ship To is not valid for the customer" error when a quote or order is created against a customer without one, as in this 2024.1 thread.
Save and test. Create a test quote or order against the customer before you hand the account to sales.
Create the first sales order
Open Sales Order Entry, pick the new customer, and add lines and releases. Pricing, quantities and dates entered here flow into shipping and invoicing. The order also inherits the customer's terms, ship-to and credit status. That's why step 6 and step 7 above matter. If the credit check trips, the order is recorded but doesn't proceed until it is released.
How to copy a sales order in Epicor
Repeat customers and standing orders are the best use of copying. It saves re-keying lines and, more importantly, re-introducing typos.
Open the source order in Sales Order Entry.
Choose Copy Order from the Actions menu. Older releases list it under Actions → Order → Copy Order, as in this community thread.
Pick which lines to bring across. Kinetic's copy routine includes a line-selection step, so you can copy part of an order rather than all of it.
Review the new order header before saving: customer, PO number, ship-to, terms and dates.
Quirk for admins: If you run BPMs on order copy, a community report says Kinetic doesn't refresh the screen the way the classic client did. Refresh the order before you edit it.
How do you do an exact duplicate order in Epicor?
An exact duplicate means copying all lines to a new order for the same customer. Epicor creates a new order number, so you aren't cloning a record. You're creating a new open order that should match the old one. Select every line, then check these before releasing it:
Dates: order date, need-by and ship-by dates should reflect today, not the original order.
Customer PO number: a duplicate PO number is the most common cause of confusion at invoicing.
Pricing: confirm the unit prices still match the current price list or contract.
Releases and charges: check delivery schedules and miscellaneous charges, including freight.
User-defined fields and notes: your BPMs may clear or retain them.
Make-to-order links: confirm job or demand linkage on the new lines.
If the customer wants the same order repeated on a schedule, ask whether a blanket order with multiple releases is a better fit than repeated copies.
Pack slips: ship, correct and update
In Kinetic the pack slip lives in Customer Shipment Entry. It is the hand-off between operations and finance. Once a shipment is marked shipped and ready to invoice, it becomes a receivable.
How to update a pack slip in Epicor (before it ships)
While the pack is open and not yet shipped, you can edit it. Open it in Customer Shipment Entry, change quantities or lines, and save. An approved user can also update the ship-to address at this stage. The header data, including address, is pulled from the order when you enter it and isn't refreshed automatically, so update it on the pack as well as the order.
Don't mark a pack shipped until it has left the dock. Many shops use Epicor's Staging and Stage Ship Confirm so that packs flip to shipped together once the truck is loaded. Practitioners describe exactly this discipline as the cheapest way to avoid corrections later.
How to correct a pack slip in Epicor (after it ships)
Once shipped, the pack is locked. What you do depends on how far downstream it has gone. The steps below come from practitioner threads, including this one on shipped packs and this one on editing after QuickShip. Validate them against your release first.
Where the pack is | How people correct it |
Shipped, not invoiced | Un-ship the pack. The status becomes Closed, so use Actions → Open to reopen it, fix the quantities, and ship again. |
Staged through Stage Ship Confirm | Un-ship from the stage ship confirm screen, then reopen the pack. |
Invoiced, invoice not posted | Delete the invoice from the AR invoice group, then un-ship and correct. |
Invoiced and posted | Create a cancellation invoice. Practitioners report a plain credit memo won't release the shipment. Then un-ship, reopen, correct, re-ship and re-invoice. |
Carrier manifest end-of-day already run | Expect extra steps. Community reports point to an Epicor support workaround or an RMA, as in this thread. |
Corrections that touch posted invoices change your books, so involve accounting and check that the fiscal period is still open.
From pack slip to invoice
In AR Invoice Entry, create an invoice group and use the Get Shipments action to pull in shipped, not-yet-invoiced packs. Invoice lines inherit quantities and prices from the order and shipment. Once the group is posted, the invoices become open receivables and the entries flow to the general ledger.
If Get Shipments returns zero invoices, check these first:
Symptom | Likely cause |
Pack shows ready to invoice, but zero invoices are created | The invoice group date is earlier than the ship date, or the Get Shipments filters (such as plant or sold-to) exclude the pack, per this community thread. |
Pack missing from the not-invoiced list | Invoice when Complete is checked on the order. Epicor's field description says invoices are created only once the whole order has shipped. |
Billing doesn't run for a customer | Customer billing settings, such as billing frequency or date, aren't set on the customer record. |
Invoice has a header but no lines | Ship quantities are zero on the shipment detail. Only positive ship quantities create lines. |
Customer's orders stall before shipping | Customer is on credit hold. |
How Hyperbots connects to Epicor Kinetic
Epicor stays the system of record. Hyperbots sits alongside Kinetic and doesn't replace it. The connector is a pre-built, production-grade integration and it works the way an Epicor user does rather than around Epicor. These are the parts relevant to the order-to-cash side:
Native service layer, not flat files. The connector talks to Epicor through its own business object services and OData collections. Anything Hyperbots does in Epicor goes through the same validation steps as a manual entry. Nothing lands that Epicor itself wouldn't have accepted.
Token-based authentication. It exchanges credentials at Kinetic's token endpoint and sends each call with a bearer token plus your tenant's API key. The token is cached and reused rather than requested per record.
Company-scoped by configuration. The Epicor company is a connection setting carried into every request, so multi-company setups don't need hard-coded customer logic.
Change-aware incremental sync. Readers track Epicor's own row-revision cursor, SysRevID, so re-runs read only what changed. Reads are paged and paced, so even a large first sync doesn't flood a live production system.
Master data that stays in step. Payment terms, GL accounts and companies flow from Epicor into Hyperbots. Your AR team never uploads chart-of-accounts or terms extracts by hand, and Epicor remains the source of truth.
Mapping as configuration. Field mappings live in templates rather than code, so custom fields and company codes are a configuration change with no release or redeploy. User-defined fields are auto-discovered. The same framework powers Hyperbots' NetSuite, SAP Business One and Datacor connectors.
Errors you can act on. When Epicor rejects a request, its own error message is surfaced to the user as written. Every stage logs a stable event code, so support can trace a document from Hyperbots to the Epicor record in minutes.
For timing, Hyperbots says integrations for ERPs with an existing API connector typically take six to eight weeks.
A note on scope. Hyperbots' published Epicor Kinetic customer deployment is on the payables side. Receivables write-back scope for a specific Kinetic environment is confirmed during implementation scoping.
Where automation fits after the invoice
Everything above is about recording transactions correctly. Epicor Kinetic handles that well, along with credit holds, shipments, AR invoices and cash receipts. It also offers its own O2C automation options, including the separate Epicor Cash Collect add-on for structured collections.
What it doesn't remove is the interpretive work around those records: reading remittances, applying messy payments, investigating short-pays, and deciding which overdue accounts to chase today. That work is where agentic AI helps. The Hyperbots Cash Application HyperAGENT matches payments to invoices across multiple signals, flags exceptions and posts validated results back to the ERP. The Collections HyperAGENT prioritizes accounts dynamically, handles follow-ups, tracks promises to pay and routes disputes.
On its AR automation page, Hyperbots reports up to 40% DSO reduction and 80% straight-through cash posting. Low-confidence cases go to a person through human-in-the-loop review.
Start Clean: Get Your Epicor Order-to-Invoice Chain Right From the First Customer
Knowing how to add a new customer to Epicor is the easy part: Customer Maintenance, a clean ID and address, standard terms, a credit limit and a valid Ship To. The harder part is keeping the order-to-invoice chain clean after that.
Copy orders deliberately, and re-check dates, PO numbers and pricing on every duplicate.
Keep packs open until goods leave the dock.
Know the correction path for each pack status before you need it.
Treat invoice troubleshooting as a short checklist, not a detective story.
Once invoices are flowing, the bottleneck usually moves to cash application and collections.
Ready to see how that works on Kinetic? Request a Hyperbots demo and we'll show you how HyperAGENTS work alongside Epicor, with Kinetic as your system of record, to cut unapplied cash and focus your collectors where it counts.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How do I add a new customer in Epicor Kinetic?
Open Customer Maintenance, create a new customer, and enter a unique Customer ID, name, address, territory and salesperson. Then complete the Contacts tab, set Terms, Ship Via and Bill To on the Billing tab, set credit limits and add a valid Ship To. Save, then test with a sample order.
2. How do I copy a sales order in Epicor?
Open the source order in Sales Order Entry and choose Copy Order from the Actions menu. Select the lines you want, confirm the header details, and save the new order. Review dates, customer PO number and pricing before releasing it.
3. How do you do an exact duplicate order in Epicor?
Copy the order with every line selected, keeping the same customer. Epicor assigns a new order number. Then check dates, customer PO number, pricing, releases, miscellaneous charges and any user-defined fields so the duplicate truly matches your intent.
4. How do I correct a pack slip in Epicor after it has shipped?
It depends on status. If the pack isn't invoiced, un-ship it, reopen it from the Actions menu, correct it and ship again. If an unposted invoice exists, delete the invoice first. If the invoice is posted, practitioners use a cancellation invoice before un-shipping. Check with your Epicor partner and accounting before touching posted documents.
5. How do I update a pack slip in Epicor before it ships?
Open the pack in Customer Shipment Entry, edit quantities or lines, and save. An approved user can update the ship-to address while the pack is open. After it is shipped or invoiced, changes are locked.
6. Why does Get Shipments create zero invoices in AR Invoice Entry?
Common causes include an invoice group date earlier than the ship date, filters such as plant or sold-to excluding the pack, Invoice when Complete being checked on a partly shipped order, missing customer billing settings, zero ship quantities, or a customer on credit hold.
7. Which customer settings affect invoicing and collections the most?
Payment terms set the invoice due date, and due dates drive aging and collections priority. Credit limits and hold status control whether orders proceed. Bill To and invoice email decide where invoices go. McKinsey's research highlights standard terms, credit checks and credit limits at onboarding as key working capital levers.
8. Does Hyperbots replace Epicor Kinetic?
No. Epicor Kinetic keeps orders, shipments, invoices, receipts and the general ledger. Hyperbots HyperAGENTS work alongside it through a pre-built connector, automating work like cash application and collections and posting validated results back to Epicor.
