I now realize that I need to cite the version in question: Sage 100 Premium 2017 (Version 5.40.1.0)

I did see a Sage 100 2018 upgrade guide that states:
"A new utility, Remove Inactive Customers, has been added to the Utilities menu. This utility allows you to delete inactive customers."

The version I am on does not have this as  you can see in the screen shot!
Link to upgrade guide:
cdn.na.sage.com/.../UpgradeGuide.pdf

You can make a custom screen for the users that should not be able to change the status field.  In the custom screen, you can hide or disable the field.

Thank you, that is an interesting idea!

We decided to modify our configuration options and check the box to activate Retain Temporary Customers with Paid Invoices option for each company we have set up.

One thing to note: per Sage docs, in regards to the specified checkbox option: "this feature is designed to help preserve file space."

This may be trivial as there are very few records that this setting will affect for us, compounded by decreasing storage/file space costs.

Futher, we have audited our security roles and we see that there are two active roles (exclude Sage's default role) with the permission to 'Modify... Accounts Receivable Options'.  In order to reduce the users that can modify the options,  we shall remove this permission from one of the two roles and move the few specified users into the other role.