Re: Newbie help

[Del Miller <..hidden..>]

Chris,

Thanks for all this info.  I think I've figured out most of my issues,
with one question remaining...

The  fact that a customer is an optional part of a project has gotten my
brain working.  For billing, this would be EXACTLY what I want/need IF I
could select a customer while entering a time card.  So, how hard would
it be to add in a drop down selection box for 'Customer' on the time
card screen and allow multiple customers to be assigned to the same project?

The flow, in this case, would be this:
    1.  Create a project sans customer (say '2007-10' for October billing)
    2.  Add a time card
    3.  Select Customer and enter other data - hit 'Update'.
    4.  Alter any data needing to be altered and hit 'Save'
          I envision a 'Customer' drop down appearing between the 'Date
worked' and 'Service Code' fields
  
Some of this functionality appears to be in place with regards to the
time cards as I noticed when generating sales orders from the
project/time cards, there is the opportunity to select a customer for
any time cards that do not have a customer assigned.

As a side note, wouldn't it make more sense to have that a dropdown
selection of existing customers rather than a free form text box when
entering a customer from the 'Generate Sales Orders' screen?  Would it
make even more sense to add dropdown selectors to each line in the
previous screen allowing one to select from there and skip the 'Select
Customer' screen altogether?  Perhaps even a hybrid of the two -- check
boxes and dropdowns, still allowing for bulk assignment via the check
box method.

Regards
Del

PS - If I wanted to document my findings and update the manual, how
would I go about doing that?


Chris Travers wrote:
> On 10/18/07, Del Miller <..hidden..> wrote:
>   
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>> I got LSMB installed on a fresh/clean system and have played around a
>> bit in a pristine environment.  I think some of my problems/issue may be
>> with the configuration of my old system as the new one seems to behave a
>> bit better.  I still have some questions regards the functioning of the
>> Project/TimeCards.
>>
>> First off, is there any docs on the specifics of how projects/timecards
>> work?   (the LSMB manual doesn't seem to cover much and I haven't found
>> anything else out there)  I've managed to get one through the system but
>> only by trial and error and as such I'm not really sure what I did to
>> make that one work.
>>     
>
> The manual was written basically as training material for a 16-hour
> training course 1 1/2 years ago for SQL-Ledger.  While it has been
> updated and expanded in a few ways, you are right that it needs more
> information of this sort.
>
> As a biasic overview:
> Projects are optionally tied to customers.  They represent a discrete
> set of work for accounting purposes.
>
> Timecards are tied to projects, services, and customers.  They
> represent an entry in what can be turned into a sales order/  After
> review, and possibly adding parts, etc. the sales order can be
> converted into an invoice.
>
> I guess the best way to go would be for me to answer any specific
> questions you have and try to use this as an opportunity to see what
> needs to be added to the documentation.
>
>   
>>  Also, I have some questions regarding the internal
>> process and what's possible to change -- perhaps those questions are
>> more appropriate for the -devel list but I'll include the whole ball of
>> wax below.
>>
>> Also, is there any code over-view that I could look at to see the layout
>> of things?  I've done a bit of Perl programming in the past (I'm a bit
>> rusty currently) and could easily tackle some of the items myself if I
>> knew where to go look.  A cursory glance at the code tells me that there
>> are some 'less than obvious' things lurking about. ;)
>>
>> My questions are these:
>>
>> Projects:
>>     - If the project end date has passed, can I still post time cards
>> against it?
>>     
>
> You are not supposed to be able to post timecards for projects not
> valid on the date of the timecard.  If this is happening it is a bug.
>
>   
>>     - Does the end date determine the Open/Closed status of a project?
>>     
>
> Yes.
>
>   
>>     - Does the project have to be closed in order to generate the sales
>> orders?
>>     
>
> No.
>
>   
>>     - What would the impact be of setting the primary key in the project
>> table to include the customer number as well, thus allowing the same
>> project name/number to be used across multiple customers.
>>     
>
> You would not be able to have projects which are not associated with
> cutomers.  If you want to do this, use a UNIQUE constraint instead.
> The primary key is actually an internal id.  Projectnumber is a UNIQUE
> index.
>
> The major difference is that UNIQUE indexes allow for NULLs in indexed
> fields.  With a primary key, you cannot do this because it introduces
> the possibility of ambiguity in referenced keys.
>
>   
>>  Or perhaps
>> modifying the code to append the customer number to the project number
>> to make it unique.  In my case, I'd like to set up a monthly project to
>> collect time for each customer so that I can bill on a monthly basis --
>> 102007 works well for October, 2007 billing but I can only use it once
>> in the current system, which leaves me manually appending some other
>> unique identifier to accommodate each customer.  Is there some other way
>> to do this that I'm missing?
>>     
>
> I would think that changing the unique index would be sufficient, but
> this codebase is known for....  interesting side-effects of seemingly
> straightforward changes (a problem we are working on aggressively).
>   
>> Time Cards:
>>     - When I enter the basics (employee, proj. number, service code,
>> desc, time in/out) and save, the time is calculated as
>> 'Non-Chargeable'.  This seems odd as I would think it would go in as
>> chargeable by default.  Is that easily changed?
>>     
>
> What exactly are you entering into each field?  Maybe we should
> suggest that we build in some logic to update instead of save in this
> case.
>
>   
>>     - If I go back in to edit the time card and change the time from
>> 'Non-Chargeable' to 'Chargeable', and then hit 'Update', it won't take
>> the change... I have to save the card (and then get the warning that I'm
>> saving over an existing entry).  So what does the Update button do exactly?
>>     
>
> Calculates things like price, chargeable time, etc.  What is probably
> happening is that by skipping the update, you are saving a timecard
> with 0 chargeable hours.
>
>   
>>     - Is it possible to have the 'Chargeout rate' auto-populate based on
>> the customer?  If I just leave it blank will the correct billing rate be
>> put in based on the price matrix for the customer?
>>     
>
> That is the intended design.
>
>   
>>     - When I enter a time card and then run a report, all the time cards
>> show up as 'closed'.  How would I keep a time card open?  Why would I
>> want/need a time card open/closed?
>>     
>
> A timecard is open if it still has unallocated chargeable time on it.
> If you have no chargeable time, it will be closed.
>
>   
>> Please feel free to redirect me as needed if I'm being stupid about any
>> of this -- I don't want to waste your time answering questions that have
>> already been answered elsewhere.  Just point me to the 'elsewhere' and
>> I'll be just as happy.  :)
>>     
>
>
> No such thing as stupid questions.  Questions like modifying code
> probably do belong on the -devel lorum.  But as for the rest, you are
> in the right place :-).
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>   
>> Thanks again.
>>
>> Regards
>> Del
>>
>> Chris Travers wrote:
>>     
>>> Just for the workflow:
>>> Create projects and services
>>> Enter time cards
>>> Under Projects/Generate/Sales Orders, generate sales orders from your timecards.
>>>
>>> If you are having issues with things not showing up, please include in
>>> the email the date format settings on the Preferences screen.   If
>>> this is really happening, then we may need to look into it as a bug
>>> report.
>>>
>>> If you skip those steps, you will find that you don't have any data to convert.
>>>
>>> Best Wishes,
>>> Chris Travers
>>>
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