Customer Field "TYPE" ???

Shanon C

Am I right in saying that you can not add the Customer field "type" on a template (invoice)? I find it a little hard to believe this is the case. 

Janelle Knight

I will keep an eye on replies too, because I can't believe you can't either!

John Graetz

Hi Shannon and Janelle.  The use of the "type" field is meant so that you can categorise your customers and therefore this is not information which would usually appear on an invoice.  So why would you be wanting this information to appear on an invoice?  Depending on why you want this to appear on invoices, there is another potential way that you could get this to show up.  John L G

Shanon C

Hi John. There is a few things we could use this for. One example would be a "TYPE" of customer that deposits into a different bank account. If the TYPE could be displayed on screen when generating invoice we could then have a template with the appropriate bank details on it. There is potentially a way around using defined fields or something along those lines but would require double entry.
Shanon

John Graetz

Hi Sharon.  There is a way to cater for this and I will work on fine tuning this and will give you a detailed response tonight.  John L G

John Graetz

Hi Sharon.  This would be my preferred option but there is another.  I will only deal with the preferred one now.  Here are the steps to follow (I hope that I get them all!!)
1.  Go the to Customer Record of somebody you want to use a special invoice template for.
2.  Click on the Additional Info tab.  On the right hand side you should see a button called Define Fields. Click on this to create a new field.
3. In the box which opens, you are going to create a new label.  Call it say CHANGE ME TO and then put a tick in the box under Customers:Jobs.  Then click on OK to close that window which will then bring you back to the Customer Record.
4.  You should now see a heading Customer Fields and underneath that the label that you created called CHANGE ME TO.  In the box adjacent to that type in the template that you want to use for this customer say **BANK 2**.  Keep it short or it will overflow in the box on the Create Invoice Window..  Click on OK to close the Customer Record.  At this stage you have completed the Customer Record.  This particular label will now appear on every Customer Record under Additional Info, but will not contain any details unless you input them into each individual record.
5.  Now go to your list of Templates and I suggest that you edit everyone of them so that you get the desired result.  I am assuming that you already have customised invoices.  If not, you will need to duplicate a generic invoice so as to make the next set of changes.
6.  Double Click on the first of your Tax Invoices in order to open it, then down the bottom, click on Additional Customisation.
7.  The first Tab here is called Header.  Underneath that you fill find the first of the Headers.  My first one is called "Default Title".  Against that is a small box and above that is a column heading called Screen and next to that is Print.  Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and you should find your newly created Label called CHANGE ME TO.  Place a tick in the first box which should be under the column headed Screen.  You might have to scroll up to see that. To the right of the box that you ticked you be your Label Box.  Make sure that it contains the words CHANGE ME TO.
8.  Now click on OK a couple of times in order to save this Invoice Template.
9.  Ultimately I strongly suggest that you do this with every one of your Tax Invoice templates.
10.  Using the template that you have changed, create a new invoice for the Customer for whom you inserted details in the Customer Field box in the Customer Record.  When you tab past the Customer Name, you should immediately see the new label box appear alongside Terms and Due Date.  Hopefully this box will be labelled CHANGE ME TO and in the box should appear **BANK 2** or whatever you chose.  This is the alert that you are wanting to see which will prompt you to change the Invoice Template for this particular customer,.
11.  Note.  Whilst every window for Create Invoice which uses the modified Invoice Template will now have a Box with a Label called CHANGE ME TO, the only time that there will be information there will be when you have specifically changed the Additional Info for the "special" customers of yours.
12.  Once you are satisfied that this is working for you, you can now change the Additional Info details for all of the customers for whom you want this info to appear on the Create Invoices screen.

I believe that you will be happy with the result.  You can follow a similar process for any other special instructions to want to show on the Create Invoice window, by creating another Custom Label (do this within a Customer Record) and adding info into the resultant box that is created, remembering that you also need to change the Invoice Template to include this detail on the Screen.

Have fun.  John L G

Shanon C

Hi john, thanks for the input. After some thought last night we decided to do something which is similar. We firstly created field called "TYPE". We then used qodbc & wrote a script to automatically populate the field with appropriate bank detail. (Easily defined by the real"type" category) Then in the tax invoice template renamed the said defined field to "direct deposit detail" .This eliminates having to have seperate invoice templates for different customer types. End result - accounts can send email batches at end of day without manually altering invoice templates, customer messages etc. Cheers Shanon

John Graetz

Wow!  That is fantastic Shanon.  You have certainly run rings around me!  Good work.  John L G

Shanon C

Not at all. Thànks again