Credit notes

[Derek Atkins]

John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:

> On Aug 31, 2012, at 6:20 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
>
>> John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:
>> 
>>> If you look in an English thesaurus, you'll find that "invoice" and
>>> "bill" are synonyms. Using one for Customer transactions and the other
>>> for Vendor transactions isn't even necessary since they're in
>>> different menus.
>> 
>> At first they were not in different menus.  That got changed later.
>> Moreover, it does matter, internally, whether it's a Customer, Vendor,
>> or Employee owner, and that needs to be configured when the dialog gets
>> created.  If everything had the same name then when you have a window
>> pop up that says "Invoice", it doesn't let you know which flavor.
>> Unfortunately the flavor is important.
>
> What has that to do with anything? Of course the user gets a different
> dialog box when she selects Business>Customer>New Statement or
> Business>Vendor>New Statement.

It has to do with the dialog/tab title.  It also has to do with internal
and short-hand descriptions.  It was also an explanation of why it is
the way it is.

>>>     Using "Purchase Document" and "Sales Document"
>>> doesn't really help either, because the document you get from a Vendor
>>> is always a "purchase document", regardless of the direction of the
>>> cash flow. How about just "Statement" to replace both Invoice and
>>> Bill?
>> 
>> See above for why differentiation matters.  Also in some languages there
>> *is* a different word for an invoice you send out vs. a bill that you
>> receive.
>
>
> Translation hints to get the right words in whatever language are a
> given. Anyway, we're looking for a term that can mean "You owe me
> money" ("Bill" or "Invoice") and "I owe you money" ("Credit
> Note"). "Statement" works.

That doesn't help unless you have disambiguation in the UI itself,
otherwise the translators only get "Invoice" (or in this case
"Statement").

> Regards,
> John Ralls

-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