Steve Jobs does have a point there. But what is also said, fewer choices in first menu makes it easier to find what you are looking for. So 3 clicks is not the whole story. The issue is reducing the number of menu choices. That’s how to design a good website. Less information is more.
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Agreed, finding your tab manually has become more searching a phone book.
But to be fair the browsers find function helps a lot with this. In fact since I started to use find on page, the number of tabs has become a smaller problem than before for now.
Dude. How many tabs do you have! You shouldn’t need the search button to find the tab.
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Tis what it is.
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I thought the optimal selection list was about 7 entries. More means the user spends too much time searching through the list. Less results in too many levels of hierarchy.
The problem from a Manager design perspective is the number of tab options is user selectable for each business. Resulting in the hierarchy being wrong for some businesses.
I think it is 6 or 7 that is the recommended magic number on websites. It was quite a surprise reading that some years ago as we were always taught that users hate to click, click, click to get to something, but actually if you limit the main menu choices, it makes it far easier for users to find even if there is slightly more clicking. But you do also have to limit the number of clicks to around 3 otherwise it becomes way to long the navigation.
I think that the stage where the number of tabs becomes annoying is when the number of required activated tabs makes it necessary to scroll down the screen to access the tabs at the end of the list.
I would like to see grouping of tabs where selecting the group heading would temporarily expand to show a clickable list of the tabs in that group.
I would far rather click to expand a group than have to scroll the page.
Suggested Group headings would go something like this:
Cash and Banking
Accounts Receivable
Accounts payable
Inventory
Employees
Fixed & Intangible assets
etc, etc
It may only need to group the tabs that fit appropriately into a group, with the more difficult to categorise remaining as standalone tabs.
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This is more or less what I am recommending. I think that you should have main tabs like banking and Cash, within that you could select Bank, Cash, Receivables, Payables, Reconciliation and whatever else goes under that. Then when you click on say Receivables you see what is in the current Account Receivables Tab.
So everything database wise structurally remains the same - the only thing that really happens is that the link to Account Receivables is moved.
I don’t know that I would go with expanding. I think clicking the tab and viewing the sub tabs is easier.
A second problem would be deciding on what the main tabs would be. For example you have accounts receivable and payable as main tabs, however I would put this under Cash and Banking. I would create a contacts tab and have employees, customers and suppliers within that tab.
Not really sure why it is advocated to kind of hide tabs when I guess that in most instances the tabs list requires less scrolling real estate than the Profit and Loss views. The single click to where you need to go is actually very handy. However, if you want changes then some that I would suggest are:
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Make it possible to change the tab order similar to how you can change the order of accounts in setting of Chart of accounts. This will help you to have your most used ones at the top requiring less scrolling on small screens.
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Consider making it possible to select and “hide” tabs to be visible under a single “Miscellaneous” (or whatever name) tab.
I have just created a new topic Manager Navigation Feedback
proposing a possible solution and outlined my reasons why I made that suggsetion.
@eko if you read that topic, it will explain why the growing tabs is an issue for many.
@Tut could you close this topic as the discussion going off topic from the original question and I have created a new post to further discuss the latest discussion points. Thanks
I can live with it although it is an inconvenience for me as most transactions I have are electronic and done against our bank accounts (with 95% of those for the one account) and reconciled to receipts/invoices on hand. All in one place means I can essentially review stuff against my bank transactions as I go, find the appropriate receipt/invoice and review any leftover accounts received for scheduling payment.
I don’t recall seeing a notice about this change as a forthcoming change and anything this significant should be notified in advance. While I can adapt fairly quickly, the other person in training to do the accounts doesn’t have the bookkeeping background or software experience I do and it doesn’t help.
I really think a statement like “Even if there is no benefit, or even if it’s worse, this is the way it needs to be …” is quite patronising. If I treated my customers like that, I doubt I would still be in business. That’s my 2 cents worth.
It is my understanding, from what the developer has said, that the splitting of the receipts and payments into 2 separate tabs was needed to make improvements in other parts of the program. Some of these improvements have started to appear and I think that all uses are going to benefit from the changes that are happening.
What I meant with my post 5 days ago is if it could be considered to ad to the cleared bank statement tab onext to bank imports new receipt and new payment buttons as in mock example below?
Accounting wise it makes sense. Just as income should go to income accounts and expenses should go to expense accounts (not credited/debited to a single balance account), keeping them separate feels in line with general accounting principles.
I agree. The structure we are talking about with grouping tabs is along the same line of thought. Payment Department, Sales dept, warehouse dept etc.
Your argument holds better for a SAAS product where the customer spends a lot of time on a single screen and doesn’t require frequent switching of tabs (writing, watching films, reading news and so on).
Accounting involves lots of input each time the program is used, and having to drill down in a deep menu each time a tab switch is required would do more harm than good in the form of wasted time.
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I like the change especially as it eliminates the duplicate description field.