Re: Vendor & Client name defaults for new Documents; Would you like them?

[Luke <..hidden..>]

On Fri, 22 Jan 2010, David Godfrey wrote:

> This is a resend,
> sent 2 messages 4 minutes apart,
> one arrived straight away,
> this one still has not over an hour later.

I got this, and then the missing version, in immediate succession.:)  This 
is not a fast, or consistently processing, list.

Comments below on the actual issue.

> David Godfrey wrote:
>       Luke wrote:
> 
>  On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, David Godfrey wrote:
> 
>  Could people please offer their thoughts on the following
> 
> The current behavior when opening a new Invoice, Order or Transaction
> is to automatically select the last used Vendor or Client.
> I have just found a number of Invoices , all on the Vendor side,
> that have been entered against the wrong Vendor, presumably the last 
> vendor used.
> Does anyone think that it would be useful to have a System>Defaults 
> option to change this behavior.
> Probably to one of....
>   Last Used
>   BLANK
>   A Specific Vendor
>     
>  The first and last option would not solve the problem you reported.  If 
> they are going to post without checking the transactee, then they'll do it 
> regardless.  I can not think of a case wherein I would rather that 
> transactions go against a vendor if they are in error, unless it is a fake 
> "check later" type of vendor.

The reason I said this, is because it is not really supposed to be 
possible to change the vendor on an existing transaction.  So a check 
later vendor/customer, while potentially useful, would relax accounting 
standards in my opinion, and suggest that transaction editing is not that 
big a deal.

I would sooner see a javascript "About to post a transaction for Joe's 
Cable Company; click to interrupt" message pop up for 5 seconds when 
posting an AP.:)

>> The middle option, which would force a manual selection, would be the 
>> most useful alternative to last-used, I would think.
> 
>       I agree Luke,
>       Blank certainly seems to be the best thing from a "get it
>       right" perspective.
>       Although there are bound to be people that would like to
>       retain the current behavior.

I have never had much of a need for the current behavior: it is rare that 
I generate two of the same thing, for the same customer/vendor, at one 
time.  On the other hand, if you are a government contractor, with only 
one customer except for rare exceptions, the "last-used" or "default-to" 
options do have their place, so I would like to see at least one of them 
available if anything makes it into the main release as a result of this 
conversation.

>>>       Point taken, System default,
>>>       with a User Default that can be overridden by the System
>>>       Default
>>>       if a System Wide check box is set.
> 
> I have spoken with Chris T about this,
> a system default is doable, but User Defaults are not an option with the
> existing code.
> Post 1.3 this will change, but for now System Wide is the only option.

The way I would imagine having to do it, is to have a table which tracks 
user ID, last-used vendor, last-used customer, use-vendor (0 or 1), 
use-customer (0 or 1).

The modification would be, when the user enters an AP/AR document, if 
"use" is TRUE, pull the vendor/customer from the table.  If it is FALSE, 
use the system default that would normally be used, which currently is 
last-used.

In system defaults, a TRUE/FALSE selection for whether to operate based 
on users or not.  If TRUE, update all entries to TRUE in the above 
described table fragment.  If FALSE, update them to FALSE.
Alternatively, drop the use-* fields from that table, and just select 
against the defaults table, since in this version, it is an all or nothing 
anyway.

A modification to this plan, would use the above described table, but make 
the controlling field be a three-way:

system|user|fixed

If system, see FALSE above.  If user, see TRUE above.  If fixed, a vendor 
or customer or both, will have to be set.  If set, the selection code 
should pull that record always, thus implementing your fixed default 
transactee idea.

Just some thoughts--haven't written any code, obviously, but at least the 
SQL side should be trivial.

Luke