Layout for Proposal/Invoice

[GManNAtl]

I have built many layouts using the typical approach of basing the layout on the Line Item table and using a list view with header and footer and it work great. 

 

However, I am designing a solution now where the line items currently are not products as much as they are brief descriptions of the work to be done of varying lengths. I plan to move them away from this to a more structured "Parts" table, but the transition may not occur for a while.

 

Obviously, by using the standard method I would have to make the body part and associated "Product Name" field large enough for the longest description. Then the short "part" descriptions will introduce large gaps of whitespace on the report. Even if I based it on the parent "Invoice" table and used a portal it doesn't resolve the issue and introduces even more problems.

 

How can I structure the report so the height of line items are dynamic? I don't see a native way to do this, so I am assuming a work around. The only thing I can really think to do is script breaking the line items down so they become several line items when they reach a certain length or something similar.

 

Any other ideas are greatly appreciated.

[bcooney]

I have built many layouts using the typical approach of basing the layout on the Line Item table and using a list view with header and footer and it work great.

Funny, that's not "standard" in my book for a desktop interface. Standard for me is a form view Invoice, with a portal to Line Items.

 

However, I am designing a solution now where the line items currently are not products as much as they are brief descriptions of the work to be done of varying lengths. I plan to move them away from this to a more structured "Parts" table, but the transition may not occur for a while.

If the line item "description" is basically a text field of any length, how does a "Parts" table help?

 

Overall, I would use a Form with a portal of line items. Each item field can use a scroll bar. That's for data entry.

 

For printing, you might run into issues with a line item field needing to break across a page. The popular technique to address this is by Bruce Robertson and is called "Virtual List."

 

hth,

Barbara