grumpydragonsoft

I have completed the beta version of Trip Reports. Trip Reports is a form geared toward those that travel and collect data about sales orders and site surveys. Basically a day to day journal of the work that is performed.

Trip Reports allows the user to collect data on a day to day basis, along with a time stamp and issues form. the time stamp allows the user to keep track of their times, while the issues form tracks outstanding problems that may occur. I have even included a pad for those last minute drawings.

Trip Report installs just as easily as any of the other grumpydragonsoft products and can be downloaded here.

Remember, this is a beta version and even though I found no issues this does not mean the form cannot use improvements.

I hope you like it!

I have provided a pdf file for instructions on importing and exporting files. For those with a pdf viewer or would like to download the pdf file, click here.

Download (PDF, 105.36KB)

In this post, I am going to cover how to use the orders and Order details section of Digital Pocket Sales. If you haven’t already done so, please read the posts on Customers and Products. We will be assuming that you have added at least one inventory item and one customer.

The orders section is what Digital Pocket sales is all about. From the Orders menu, the user can add an order using a customer in the database. let’s create an order.

When the Orders form is opened, the last sale entered will be displayed. This sale belongs to Mr. Finley. From this page we can see there are 5 other orders or records and the customer Mr. Finley is customer number 17. We also see he purchased $75.26 worth products.

Just a side note, the question mark button will take you to Mr. Finley’s customer record.

Select the + or add button. A blank record is created and the shipping page of the form is displayed. From here, select the method of shipment to the customer. If you choose In Stock, this means you basically provided the product.

The current date of the record is entered in the Date of Sales field but can easily be changed by selecting the field.

Enter a date in the Customer request field. This is the date you hope to get the product out to the customer. The Actual Ship Date is when you actually get the product to the customer. This let’s you close the order.

Go ahead and select the Main Page.You will see there is now a drop down box available for you to select the customer that wants to place an order.

Once you find the customer, a dialog box will appear asking is you would like to add items to this order. Select Yes. The Order Details form opens (look at top left of screen for name) and now choose what category or group the item is in.

Any group or category you choose will update the Product dropdown. select a product and you will note that the cost will appear for this item. Switching between retail and wholesale will determine how much you will be selling the item for.

The Quantity field is how many of the products you will be selling. I added 2. So now we have an Extended price. If you want to add another item, select the + button on this form and a new blank record will be available to repeat the above.You will see that on this page, there is also a sales order number. This is used for filtering mode.

Select the shopping cart button. You will be provided a list of all the items placed in the order. If you need to modify a product, simply double click that product and the order Details will once again be displayed. Selecting the main Page button will return you to the current product.

Selecting the Tally $ button will create a message box asking if you want to continue to the checkout. Select Yes this time and the final part of the order will be displayed.

On the left side of the form are three drop down boxes: Shipping and Handling, Sales Tax, and Discount. Currently these are not user settable, but if there are enough requests, I can update them in the future. Currently the S/H and Sales Tax are maxed at 10%. The Discount is maxed at 25%.

Go ahead and select a Shipping and Handling % and a Sales Tax. The Discount drop down is a % given to a customer. This can be left at 0% or changed to provide a certain discount. If used, the text Discount will be highlighted red to signify a discount.

As you change the drop down percentages, you will see the amount reflects these changes.

Select Main Page. the Transaction Is Complete checkbox is when the order is complete, that is, the end of the sale. If selected, you will be returned to the shipping area to update the date.

On the bottom of the form are four menus. Select the List menu. You will see this is where you would filter depending if the or is still open or has been shipped.

You have just placed your first order! There are many other features in this form, too many to list in this post, but I will continue to add more posts on DPS since I believe it is a great program.

If there are numerous records in a table, working with the entire list can be cumbersome. You can narrow your view to just those records that match specific criteria by using the Custom Filter.

Using Travel Expenses as an example, you might want to know what records exceed a certain amount of money, say, $15.00. You may also want to know which records were after a certain date. On top of this, you only want to see lunch records. The records that do not meet this criteria will not be displayed and will be filtered out.

The set of conditions is called a "filter." A filter can have up to three conditions. Each condition consists of a column name, a value, and a comparison operator that specifies how the record’s value in the column must compare to the specified value in order for the record to be included in the list. You can specify that a record must match at least one of the conditions, or all of them.

For this example, let’s say we want to see all the records that meet the following conditions:

Over $15.00
Created after 11/6/2009
The Category Type is Lunch

To do this, we will be using all three conditions. First we will select Option|Custom Filter. The Define Filter dialog box will appear:

You will note there are three dropdowns.This means you can have up to three conditions a record will have to meet before it will be displayed.

If you had previously applied a filter, the application you are using will display those conditions. For our example, we need to remove them and begin with a clean slate as depicted by the image on the left. This is normally not necessary, but to assist you better in using the filtering, let’s clear the conditions first.

To do this, select the first dropdown arrow and look for an empty line. You will note that if a comparator or value is displayed, it will disappear.

Select the second dropdown arrow and look for an empty line. You will note that if a comparator or value is displayed, it will disappear.

Select the third dropdown arrow The third dropdown arrow and look for an empty line. You will note that if a comparator or value is displayed, it will disappear.

You are now ready to begin filtering…

Select the drop-down arrow for the first field in the dialog box, and select the column that contains the data you want to compare. For this example, select Date.

In the field that appears to the right of the column dropdown, select a comparison operator. For this example, select > , or the greater than symbol.

In the value field, enter the comparison value. For this example, enter 11/6/2009.

Note: all comparison operators are available for every type of column.

At this point, if we were to select ok, all records with a date after 11/6/2009 will be displayed.

Let’s enter the next part of the filter.

Select the second dropdown arrow, select the column Billed.
Select the comparison >.
Select the value 15.00.

At this point, if we were to select ok, all records with a date after 11/6/2009 and whose records contained a billed amount over $15.00 will be displayed.

Let’s enter the next part of the filter.

Select the third dropdown arrow, select the column category. Select the comparison = .
Select the value Lunch.

You will also note that at the bottom of the Define Filter box are radio buttons:

Match all: Displays all records that match the parameters provided; after 11/6/2009 AND more than $15.00 AND Lunch.
Match at least one: Displays all records that match at least one of the conditions; either after 11/6/2009 OR more than $15.00 OR Lunch.

Select ok. A filtered list will appear displaying ONLY the records that meet the criteria provided:

Out of ALL the records, ONLY records whose entry date was after 6/11/2009 are filtered.
Out of these filtered records, ONLY those records that exceed $15.00 are filtered.
Out of these filtered records, ONLY those records that are Lunch are filtered.

You can see how versatile and helpful custom filtering can be. Custom filtering is available on all grumpydragonsoft applications.