Issues with Form Defaults for combined Receipts & Payments tab

1

  1. The only transaction form related to the combined Receipts & Payments tab in Form Defaults is labeled Bank Transaction. Yet any cash or bank account can be selected. At a minimum, this form should be retitled.

  2. The choices for Type are Receipt and Payment. Yet these are overridden in the tab when clicking on New Receipt or New Payment. This field should be disabled in Form Defaults if it has no effect.

  3. Formerly entered defaults for bank and cash transactions seem to be lost. There is now only the single form. However, it is quite likely that desired defaults for bank and cash transactions will be different. Likewise, defaults for receipts and payments will probably be different. If there is going to be a default for this form, we need options for all 4 types of transactions:

    • Bank receipt
    • Bank payment
    • Cash receipt
    • Cash payment

    They can all use the same form, but different settings must be allowed. Each would have to come into effect based on selections made in the Receipts & Payments tab. And that might mean changing defaults as a form is entered, which could be confusing and potentially trap a user in a loop.

  4. Having raised these points, I also wonder whether there should be a Form Defaults option pertaining to this tab at all. Given the multiple transaction possibilities addressed by a single input form, maybe defaults are not appropriate.

2
  1. Fixed in the latest version ( 18.8.48)
  2. There are quite a few fields everywhere in form defaults where you could argue “it’s not really applicable”. For example Date field, Reference field etc. Then there are fields where it’s kind of a gray area. It’s difficult to draw the line. But even if we would draw the line and remove some fields, the forms in form defaults would start to look quite different from what they actually are. I will leave it as it is for now for that reason.
  3. I agree merging all 4 form defaults into single one is going to result is a loss. There is still value to have form defaults for this unified form. If for no other fields, then for custom fields at least. The only way to have form defaults for Receipts and Payments separately would be to have 2 tabs Payments and Receipts as separate tabs instead of single one called Receipts & Payments.
  4. I think every tab needs to have form defaults. Form defaults are the way to set up default values for custom fields.
3
  1. That works.
  2. Point taken. As long as the override works, I suppose it doesn’t matter.
  3. I’m persuaded by your custom field argument. Since I questioned the need in my point #4, I can hardly object to the relatively small remaining benefit—which might turn out to be quite valuable for some.
  4. Acknowledged.
4

I like having the two tabs combined, but I think the defaults should be broken apart. In our business every receipt goes into a checking account. Every purchase comes from a business credit card. Before these defaults were set, but it has caused a lot of extra work because we are used to having the defaults. Payments are being deposited into the credit card account most of the time and we have to fix it on our weekly reconciliations.

I wouldn’t think it would be too difficult to break them out and just have it coded so that when the dropdown Receipt or Payment is chosen to pull the defaults from the settings page. Similar to how the “Status” boxes show up once a bank account is chosen.