Archiving & superseded customers

Keeping data in sync

Customer records in ERPs are rarely deleted; they are renamed, merged or marked inactive. AIOTIC understands the common conventions so you can mirror what your ERP does without a separate "status" field.

Deleting

DELETE /customer/{number} removes the record entirely. Use it when the debtor is gone for good. Orders that previously resolved to it will resolve to nobody (customer_id: null → ATTENTION) — which is what you want for a dead debtor.

Archiving by name marker

If your ERP keeps inactive customers with a marker in the name, keep sending the record as-is. AIOTIC archives a customer whose name contains a legacy or closure marker such as:

formerly, voorheen, (old), inactive, deprecated, do not use, niet gebruiken, niet meer leveren, stopt, sluiting, gesloten, geschlossen, vervallen, closed, failliet, fout

An archived record:

• is never chosen by identification (it cannot steal an order from the live customer it resembles),
• still resolves when a document explicitly prints its customer number, so the operator sees "this is the archived record 12305" instead of nothing,
• is un-archived automatically when the marker disappears from the name on the next sync.

Archiving is evaluated on every write, so it follows your ERP naturally.

Redirects: "see customer N"

When a debtor is renumbered or merged, ERPs often keep the old record with a pointer in the name:

*** ZIE 12306 ***      ZIE KLANT 12306      SEE 10564      *** 11867 ***

AIOTIC parses this into a redirect. The old record stays searchable (its address, VAT and e-mail are exactly what the customer still prints on documents), but an order matched to it is filed under the live successor (customer_id = 12306). Chains are followed; cycles and archived targets stop the redirect at the last live number.

Not a redirect

leveren gaat via 11649 ("deliveries go through 11649") is a delivery-routing note, not an identity change, and is deliberately ignored.

Products

There is no archiving for products: an article that must not be ordered is deleted (DELETE /product/{no}/{lang}). A deleted article is no longer a valid article number, so orders mentioning it go to ATTENTION instead of into your ERP.

Mappings

Delete a mapping when the customer stops using that code or when the target article is retired. Deleting a customer or product does not delete its mappings automatically; delete the mappings first in your sync order (the SDK does).