Customer vs Company

[Derek Atkins]

Retracile <retracile at earthlink.net> writes:

> > First we NEED some small-business documentation.  Care to write it? ;)
> 
> I'll try to take notes as I set up my wife's business in gnucash and post 
> them.  They may be a bit rough, but hopefully I can get the ball rolling.  
> Part of my motive for digging into GnuCash is to make it more 
> self-explanitory. :)

Thanks.  It would be greatly appreciated.

> > I'm not sure what this means.  What is a "list customer companies"
> > report, and what information would be reported?  How is it any
> > different than performing a search?  Or the A/R aging report (to see
> > what customers have been invoiced and how much).
> 
> I'd like to be able to get a list of all customers.  Nothing more.  I can 

There are a number of ways of doing it, but yes, there is not a single
command to list them all.   One thing you can do is search on regex .*
or you can search for non-matches of something that you know you don't
use (as you suggest bellow)...

> search for non-matches to '?' since none have that in their name.  But there 
> is not a direct way that I can see to just tell me who all the customers are.  
> (To be honest, that is what I expected from the 'Customer Report': just a 
> list of all customers.)

I'm not sure why you'd expect a Customer Report to give you a list of
all the Customers -- a Customer Report is a report about a
Customer....

> Basicly, 
> Business -> Customer -> New Customer
> Business -> Customer -> Find Customer
> needs
> Business -> Customer -> List Customers
> - OR -
> Reports -> Business Reports
> needs
> Reports -> Business Reports -> Customer List
> 
> and s/Vendor/Customer/ (and s/Employee/Customer/, if applicable.)

Probably the best way to accomplish this would be a "List All" button
in the search window.  The latter suggestion is out of the question --
it makes no sense at all.  The former could be done, but I'm still
hesitant when deep in my gut I find "list all" to be a Bad Idea (TM)
in general.  It just doesn't scale.

> That reminds me....
> When there is no customer selected, the message is "No Valid Company 
> Selected", which to a new user, isn't very helpful, particularly if they are 
> expecting a list of Customers.  I'd much rather see something like "This 
> report gives information on a selected customer.  Use the Options button to 
> select the desired customer."  It would need to say vendor (or employee?) 
> instead of customer, as appropriate.

Well, expecting a list of customers was just, well.... Silly!  I have
no clue what gave you that impression.  It's not like there are other
reports that would do that, so I'm not sure what gave you that
impression.

As for "No Valid Company Selected" -- that's a good idea.  The major
issue is that the same code is used for Customers, Vendors, and
Employees so we would need a BUNCH of extra strings in there.  But I
do like your suggestion -- I'll just but a case statement in there and
use a bunch of strings like that.

> Come to think of it...  Can we say 'customer company' and 'vendor company' 
> here?  It would at least give a clue about the 'everyone is a company' 
> premise.

No.  I very much dislike that phrase.

> > Basically, you are allowed to enter the invoice id yourself if you
> > wish, but if you leave it blank then then system will automatically
> > generate one for you -- a monotonically-increasing number.  Hover your
> > mouse over the ID entry and read the pop-up message.
> 
> Hmm....  Then I'd be of the opinion that it should be removed.  Add 
> auto-completion or something if you want a shortcut.  But I think having this 
> field adds complexity for the user for little-to-no gain

Just because YOU don't use it doesn't mean someone else doesn't.
I for one use the IDs.  You can feel free to ignore it, but removing
it because YOU don't find it useful is a little selfish, don't you
think?

> Thanks for taking the time to discuss this.  :)  As time permits, I'll try to 
> lend a hand.

You're welcome.  Thanks.

> HTH,
> 
> Eli

-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