An example where links are provided and life is good:
If I go to the suppliers tab (and I have used a search term of “AG” just to shorten the list) I get all my suppliers. If I go across to the invoices column, I am taken to the “Purchase Invoices” for the relevant supplier and from here I have all my invoices and I can access the payments through the “Balance Due” column.
Now, I can also simply go to the Purchase Invoices tab and search for all invoices related to the particular supplier (certainly doable, messy, but doable. Having that shortcut is nice).
An example of where an added link would be of benefit:
– 1 –
Let’s go to Payments and Receipts, because I know I have an unallocated payment to be fixed (well, this is how I check, if there’s a better way to check, feel free to point that out, however, this is an example of where more links would be better, not a better way to do the task… just saying).
Viewing the payment will show me the invoice associated with the payment.
Editing the payment will allow me to change the invoice.
However, there is no way to navigate TO the invoice, I must create a whole new search to do this (ie, I have to go to Sales Invoices and search for the relevant invoice according to whatever specifiers I need).
In this example, I realise the “#” field is a reference to the payment and not the invoice, however an extra column could be presented in this table to explicitly link to the associated invoice. As with other unused columns in other tables, if the field is empty or not used, it does not need to be displayed (or optionally turned off?). One could argue The contact field is or is not necessary, or my receipt number custom field (a legacy from when manager didn’t have it’s own), to me, I personally would like to see a reference to where the payment relates.
In the Suppliers example above, I am given a handy shortcut to a supplier’s invoices avoiding doing my own unnecessary search within purchase invoices. However, here I am not. It would be nice if there was a way to navigate between the two.
That is just one example, let’s look at another:
– 2 –
In the very first screen cap above (in this post) we see a(n abridged) list of suppliers. On the right is a column for invoices, clicking that takes you to purchase invoices for only that supplier (already discussed). This is super handy and could be described thus:
Suppliers > invoices >> purchase invoices of the supplier
Looking AT purchase invoices, I think it would be handy if the reverse also happened and the “Supplier” field of the purchase invoice tab took you to a list of purchase invoices by that supplier.
Purchase Invoice > Supplier* >> (all) purchase invoices of the supplier
* currently it takes you nowhere, but often it’s in this screen I think about the last invoice before this one, or several invoices before this one. Right now, I have to go to suppliers and then invoices. What would be nice, is if in the above screenshot, that clicking “AGL” would take me to outstanding (or all) invoices of that supplier. eg:
@Tut because I know you will love to bring up “context”, let me preface this by saying, when looking at a list of all purchase invoices by all suppliers, clicking on a supplier name could (and I would argue, should) take you to purchase invoices of that supplier. I (for the sake of an argument) would not expect it to bring up the contact details of the supplier. I should already be able to see that in the “view” area. At any rate, please just accept these as examples of links I’d like to see implemented, and not as a discussion on how people think differently and would expect different contexts. That’s almost certainly a given and we could leave it to @lubos to make his own determination on what context is the most relevant.
That’s all I have time to add right now (I’ve spent too long on this), but I will add some other links I’d like to see later, and if anyone else has any other suggestions, please do add them here, otherwise it’s just looks like I’m the only one who really wants this sort of thing and I’m sure there are others out there who’d also like to see this.
BTW, these were just two quick off the cuff things as a result of things I’m doing today.