Re: Invoice description text

[Stroller <..hidden..>]

On 10 Mar 2008, at 22:20, Keith Edmunds wrote:
> ...
> When creating an invoice, we are accustomed to being able to put free
> text in the "description" field, but I can't see how to do that in  
> LSMB.
> For example, we may put, "Linux consultancy - resolve Samba login  
> problem
> and update system". LSMB seems to want to have a service defined  
> for every
> variant of text that appears in the "description" field; clearly  
> that's
> going to be impractical if we have different text for each invoice.
>
> Am I missing something, or are we restricted to only having defined
> services in the "description" field? Or do we need to change the  
> way we
> think about invoices?

Hi there,

I use the "item notes" field for this.

My business is Pete's Plumbing, and I have a standard part PP0001  
which has a description of "Plumbing - 1 hour" and a price of my  
standard hourly rate.

When entering a sales invoice I type "PP" in the part number field  
and press "enter" (or click "update" at the bottom of the page) and  
the remainder of the part number and the description field is then  
automagically filled in. A new box appears in the "description"  
column (across from where it now says "Delivery Date") and into this  
I can type my item notes, viz "recovery of goldfish from septic tank;  
CPR successfully applied".

On my invoice I use the Augie hand-writing font to distinguish the  
"item notes" - as if Pete has pulled the invoice off the dot-matrix  
printer and underneath where it unhelpfully says "PP0001 - Plumbing -  
1 hour" has scrawled in biro what he actually did on the job  
"recovery of goldfish from septic tank").

The <?lsmb itemnotes ?> item is used in invoice.tex, thus:

  <?lsmb foreach number ?>
    <?lsmb number ?>
    <?lsmb if deliverydate ?>
      \par {\note <?lsmb deliverydate ?>}
      <?lsmb end deliverydate ?> &
    <?lsmb description ?>
    <?lsmb if itemnotes ?>
      \par {\note \nohyphens{<?lsmb itemnotes ?>}}
      <?lsmb end itemnotes ?> &
     \pounds <?lsmb sellprice ?> &
     x <?lsmb qty ?> &
    \pounds <?lsmb linetotal ?>}\\  % end of table row
  <?lsmb end number ?>

You need to add your part PP0001 & hourly rate in Goods & Services >  
Add Service first. Watch out for the "updated" date if you're back- 
entering last week's invoices.

Stroller.