Account & Contact Fields in Invoices

[Venko IT]

Hello guys, 

 

First of all would like to congratulate you all for this product - FMSP is great. I'm kind of getting the grips with filemaker and having this solution ready and unlocked so I can study to solidify my understanding is great. I have also started to use this in my business - a Fire Extinguisher company - we sell, re-fill and do projects for companies that need to have their building adequate to the Fire Brigade Specifications. 

 

I just had to translate EVERYTHING into Portuguese. Great experience going over each and every layout, field labels. Not finished yet, need to continue with the scripts (when a dialog box comes up)....great fun!!! LOL!!!

 

***

 

Anyway, after studying a little I came up with what seems to be repeating fields in the solution and I want to understand why they are there. I.e: In invoices there are fields account, project, contact, address and they are all unlocked and users can add their info there. 

 

However, if I add a account, contact to the fields it does not update or create a new account or contact. Maybe I am off track here, but should these fields not update or give the user the option to create a new account or contact from the invoice context?

 

The way I see is that these fields should all be locked and have a button set up to work exactly like the magnifier on the right of the field...which is you click on the field and it takes you to the find a account, contact, etc. 

 

Or maybe the field would automatically take you to the accounts layout to allow you to create a new account, or contact, etc. 

 

I don't know, I am just throwing some of the impressions I had. I am just a beginner intermediate user of FM and FMSP...

 

 

[Richard Carlton]

Ah... I see.   Ok... so some business will need to create invoices without attaching those to a Contact or an account... but they will want to type that information manually into those fields.

 

So it allows for manual entry...or the relational connections.

 

I am totally open to ideas to make improvements here.

 

Also an added level of complexity... is that some people use accounts... and some don't.  For example... even though RCC has 25 staff... we are not big corporate enough to use accounts.   We just use contacts... and if we want to see a specific company... we just find for that companywithin contacts.... and come up with a list... not a single record in an account table.

 

Making it flexible... make it a little squirrelly. 

 

I am working with FMSP almost everyday... as we shoot videos... so now is a good time to shoot me ideas.

[Venko IT]

WOW...getting an response straight from Mr Carlton! cool!!! LOL!!!

 

Thank you very much for the reply. I think I'll get those fields locked, as we will be using them only connected to Contacts and Accounts. I still haven't decided whether to use only Accounts, or Accounts and Contacts, or only Contacts. 

 

Our Business deals with Companies - so I would Imagine it would be Account, but also with individual professionals, like taxi-drivers (yeah, it is law in Brazil to have a working and functioning fire extinguisher in the vehicle ! Fine is really expensive!), so I need to decide if I should use Contacts for these cases, or define everyone as Accounts, or as Contacts. 

 

Work still in progress! 

 

Thank you very much for your reply. 

 

Once again, great produt. Using in my company but also learning a lot with it...looking almost everyday under its hood to look for more and more information!

 

Thanks!

[soarin]

its hot here today, taking a break from mowing the 40 acres and kicking the mule but this reads like the accounts/contacts version of the 'ol chicken/egg thing. in my case, accounts are our bread and butter. all 1000+ products i have in fmsp are tied to accounts for regulatory purposes only so i don't deal with accounts much directly otherwise but do have over 100 contacts that are vendors and individuals for whom I keep track of projects and to-do's with. that segregation works good for me in fmsp. just began using the follow-up scheduling with some of them and liking what i see so far. good stuff. 

[Richard Carlton]

Yes,

 

You guys are maing my point for me.  Two businesses...with totally different business work flows... driving different needs.  So we have to make FMSP sufficient flexible.

 

Just keep the pieces you need.   Delete the stuff you don't  Keep backups as you go.

 

- RC

 

p.s. I will be at a FileMaker event in Portal for the next couple of days...so I may be slow responding to things... FYI.