I am using billable time. As each week it is aproximately the same amount of hours, i normaly duplicate the record of one week to create a record for the current week. When I look at the information in the history (audit trail) the new created record has information stored that isn’t visible on the screen when creating (duplicating) the billable time record (Invoive number and written off date). Apparently this information is stored when duplicating a record and stays as part of the record even after the record has been changed.
By “duplicate” I assume you mean clone. In Manager, a clone is an exact copy of the source transaction with the exception of automatic reference numbers (if you have that set up under Form Defaults for the transaction type).
Why is the preservation of information in the History a problem? Based on what you have said, it accurately reflects what you have done. Contents of History have no bearing on your accounting.
@Tut, First of all, I agree that the preservation of information has no influence on the accounting. But … after cloning, I edited some of the fields that are visible. In that I effectively created a new record based on the older record. The preserved information is not visible and can not be altered. By maintaining this information in the database, invalid relationships may arise. I have no knowledge of the exact datamodel and don’t know if it could actually cause a problem but i thought I should point it out.
This behavior is common throughout the program. If something is not explicitly overwritten or deleted, it remains. For example, on a sales invoice, you check the box for a discount and enter 10%. You later uncheck the box. The discount goes away and never troubles you. But if you recheck the box, the 10% will already by there.
When cloning, you should always be aware of this. If you don’t want original aspects of the parent to show up in the clone, delete them. By the way, the kind of information you mention may not be displayed on the View screen, but it is definitely shown on the Edit screen for a billable time entry. That is also common: Edit screens almost always contain more information than View screens.