Re: Proposal: More intuitive UI for Customer/Vendor screens

["Brenda J. Butler" <..hidden..>]

On 01/02/2013 10:01 AM, Michael Richardson wrote:
> 
>>>>>> "Erik" == Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> writes:
>     Erik> Working with the Customer/Vendor interfaces for a while now,
>     Erik> I've been 
>     Erik> thinking how to improve it -- make it more intuitive.
> 
> It is rather complex right now, and I think that it needs a "KISS" flag
> to turn off even some of the complexity we have right now.  
> 
> I can understand that there are things which can not even be expressed
> now, but it might be easier to deal with the more complex things if we 
> do not try to cater to both Expert and Basic uses.
> 
>     Erik> Attached I've drawn a layout which I think fits better with
>     Erik> the model that 
>     Erik> our UI already supports.
> 
> So Addresses live inside Accounts.
> 
> Great, 95% of users likely only ever have one account per vendor, so in
> that canonical case, it would be nice if that outer Account box could
> disappear.
> 


As a new user to ledgersmb, I'd like to vote for simpler
customer/vendor/contact/address/employee/admin handling.

Looking in the DB, the following tables might have to do with other companies and people
(just based on guessing by the table names):

business
company
company_to_contact
company_to_entity
company_to_location
contact_class
country
country_tax_form
department
eca_to_contact
eca_to_location
entity
entity_employee
location
person
person_to_company
person_to_contact
person_to_entity
person_to_location
user_preference
users
warehouse


This seems complex, even if some of them are just join tables.  It's hard to understand
as a new user how it's supposed to work.

I see nothing wrong with keeping a bunch of ship-to addresses (or even just "addresses"
which I guess are called "locations" in ledgersmb) for any given company or person.

I looked at these tables while trying to figure out user handling ... as a new user,
I wanted to know what an "employee" and a "user" are, and why you would classify
somone as one or the other.  Esp. as my install didn't work so I wondered if I had
mis-used the employees/users tables.

I'm guessing that a "user" is someone who can log in to ledgersmb, while an "employee"
might get a paycheque from the accounting system?  Is that right?  Is it complete?

What is the difference between a "business" and a "company"?  I was a bit surprised to
find there wasn't a "customer" or "vendor" table.  Ok, business seems to be
a way to list out different discounts, rather than a table of other organizations.
company doesn't seem to have a way to distinguish between customer/vendor but
there is a foreign key to entity table and the entity table has a foreign key to
an "entity_class" table that distinguishes things like "customer", "employee"
and "referral".

It would be awesome if there was a diagram of the tables and an explanation of
what parts of ledgersmb use which tables.

The problem that started this thread could be solved if a customer could have
multiple ship-to addresses, it seems possible using the many_to_many join table
of company_to_location.  Well I suppose you all know that already, and are just
discussing how to present (and collect) that kind of info on the web page.

My first view of the web interface, I wasn't sure how to enter companies
(vendors or customers).  Also I wasn't sure how to show the list of employees.
And I could not see a way to show the chart of accounts.  I will be looking again,
I'm just recalling from my first glimpse two weeks ago.  There was an AP, AR
and another section (maybe for HR).  Nothing for "accounting system" or "chart
of accounts".

Is my install defective?  It might be ... a bit of custom code arrangement.  I'm
not sure what to expect, so I don't know if it is working properly or not.
But, seems wrong that I cannot see the chart of accounts before entering
any transactions.

Thanks for listening.
-- 
}{ Centre for Research and Experimental Development in Informatics Libre





Brenda J. Butler
..hidden..
+1 613 693 0684  #3202
F3018 - 283 Alexandre Taché
Gatineau (QC) J9A 1L8 CANADA
Sustainable Innovation // Innovation Durable