Should customer/supplier custom fields show on transaction forms?

@lubos, a recent forum topic revealed a bug, where custom fields for suppliers are showing twice on the Supplier Statement report. This raises the question, however, of whether custom fields defined for customers and suppliers should show at all on transaction forms when that custom field has not been defined for the form. I believe they should not. Here are a few examples of why that could cause problems:

  • A custom field for supplier bank information is created to support electronic payments. A business might want this to show on purchase invoices or bank payments. But it would almost certainly not want it to show on delivery notes given to drivers. So a custom field for bank information might be created under purchase invoices, but not delivery notes. Yet, because the field is created for the supplier, it will show on both.

  • A point of contact in a customer’s accounting department could be entered in a custom field. A business could want that to show on sales invoices, which go to the accounting department, but not sales quotes going to supply chain management. Again, however, because the field was defined for the customer, it will appear on both transaction types.

  • A custom field might be defined for delivery route information of a customer. This would be valuable on delivery notes, but not customer statements.

The best solution seems to be that custom fields checked to show on documents should only show when the particular document form includes that same custom field. This approach provides complete flexibility on where information appears.

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I use the Custom Field “Account no.” under Suppliers custom fields to put my account number with that particular supplier on Purchase Orders…at least I did until the bug showed up.
Now the field is missing from my purchase orders…(My mistake, fixed see below)
I would guess that somewhere in the coding the reference to purchase orders got changed to statements hence the reason it is appearing twice on them (statements).
Just a guess.

@VACUUMDOG, that was a plausible guess, but does not explain things. I can reproduce the bug in a business with no custom fields defined for anything except suppliers.

OK, bit of a stuff up. In all the stuffing around I forgot to re-tick show on printed forms.

But I DO need to put my supplier provided account number on purchase orders and having each account number as a field with the supplier is, in my opinion, the best option. It is the same with all the other accounting programs I have used.pothen

Your desire would be accommodated perfectly by my suggested solution.