1st post: quotes vs invoices

[rvnd]

Hello all.

I'm glad to have found this community - I hope to share much here, wherever I can.

I've been down a long road of evaluating all the mac small business accounting software for my solo business, but nothing fit the bill. So, hopefully Filemaker to the rescue. I've used Filemaker for many years, but only in small ways for my prior employers.

So, anyway, after that intro: my question.

I want to keep my invoice numbers and quote numbers different (unlike most accounting apps), and didn't want each to increment when I was producing the other. So I opted for two tables, both using the same LineItems table.

Am I doing that right- using two tables relating to one instance of a LineItems table?

The reason for one instance of the LineItems table is so that when I view the LineItems layout, I can show either the quote or invoice related data.

[IdealData]

Are your invoices ALWAYS the same content as your quotes?

If you are modifying the content to suit the invoice then you no longer have a true record of the original quote.

Personally I always separate the quotes and invoices to their own SET of tables, usually header/line details pairs, and script the creation of the invoice from the quote.

[rvnd]

Thanks for the reply.

I expect that the info won't always be the same. So I'll keep my two tables.

I think I'm mostly up to speed with portals and related tables now, so my l'il database is progressing very nicely. It's already tons better (for me) than many of the small business accounting apps out there.

I've got a dashboard, banking register, sales register, invoice entry and quote entry, multiple currencies, gst.

The few major tasks I've ahead of me is completing a nice, informative dashboard, and setting up my reports.

That's all I needed for my bookeeping, but it's amazing how scarce simple solutions with a good UI are.