Idears for improving the Busines GUI

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Christof Donat <cdonat at gmx.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> During a discussion on the german GNUCash mailing list some idears came up 
> about the UI of the busines module.
>
> I try to translate my Idears for you because this seems to be the best place 
> to discuss them:
>
> - Have another tab in the main window like for the reports called something 
> like 'customers & suppliers'.

We have one..  It is called "Business".

> - some kind of Table or maybe even a Hirarchy of customers and suppliers in 
> there. With a hirarchical structure you could e.g. store multiple departments 
> for a customer, but I guess that would be a major change - it is not that 
> important.

This has been discussed.  Unfortunately it is something that doesn't
scale very well.  Imagine 1000, even 10000 customers!  Try putting that
number into a list and trying to find it.

> - doubleclicking a customer or a supplier opens a book similar to an 
> accountbook with all the invoices for that company in it. A Invoice then 
> could look like a multi part booking.

Nope.  This wont ever happen.  An invoice will look like the current
invoice.  Now, having a double-click open up a list of invoices for
the customer -- that I could consider.  But the double-click is always
going to be context dependent.

> - in the 'customers and suppliers' tab e.g. red color could point to due 
> invioces.

there's already a list of over-due bills.  Expanding that to overdue
invoices would be somewhat straightforward.  There's also the Aging
reports which detail all of it together.

> That would make many things a lot easier:
> - Bulk input of invoices would become a lot more efficient.

QSF will fix this.

> - It would feel a lot more consistent with the rest of GNUCash.
> - If you have similar invoices for one customer e.g. every month that could be 
> easier done with duplicating the Invioce with a new date and Invioce number.

Bug #114421

> - Adding a supplier or a customer is almost like adding an account - a lot 
> more intuitive and more consistant with the rest of GNUCash.

Umm, it IS like adding an account.

> I know that this does not cover everything of the busines module, but it may 
> be a start for improving the UI.
>
> What do you think about these idears?

Send in patches.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available