When you use FirstBIT ERP, you often need to work with document lists or item lists such as Invoices, Purchase Orders, Items. The documents can be counted in thousands that makes it difficult to find the documents you need. To narrow the list, you can define filters, set specific order of documents.
Also, you can configure document or item lists by choosing the columns to appear in the list.
For each document list, the applied settings are stored on per user basis. If for a specific document list you need multiple sets of settings, for you can save each of them as custom settings under separate name.
Configuration options
In the application, open the document or item list that you would like to configure. To view the configuration options, click the More button on the form toolbar and then select Configure list.
The List Options dialog box opens. Depending on the particular document type or item type, the dialog box can include the following tabs:
- Main: This tab presents the date format, currency visibility, and applied filters.
- Filter: Using this tab, you can define filters.
- Order: This tab can be used for changing the order of documents or items in the list. For example, the documents can be listed according to their dates: from earlier to later ones.
- Conditional Appearance: Using this tab, you can change the appearance of specific columns based on conditions.
- Grouping: Using this tab, you can select how to group the data.
The List Options dialog box. The Main tab
The Main tab
You can use this tab to set the Date field format, set visibility of currency and its symbol, and view the filters applied.
Select the Date Field Format (Today - Only Time) check box to indicate that for current-date documents, date is not shown, only the time of creation. Clear the check box if you need to present the current date as other dates.
Select the Currency Field Visibility option to indicate that you want the Currency column to appear in the document list.
Also, decide if the currency symbol should be visible.
Review the applied filters listed on the Main tab and open the Filter tab to adjust them. By default, the filters that are available on the top of the document list appear here.
The Filter tab
To set filters for the data to be displayed in the list, open the Filter tab.
You can enable the filters that by default are available on top of the corresponding document list; these filters are shown with already selected condition type (as in the screenshot below, Equal to). You need to enable the filter by selecting the corresponding check box and selecting a particular value (for instance, Block Optic as the company of interest in the screenshot below).
The List Options dialog box. The Filter tab
Also, you can add custom filters. For this, click Add new item on the toolbar (in the right pane), point a field in the left pane of the form and click Select. The selected field appears in the right pane with the check box selected, then you can select the type of comparison and the value (as in the screenshot above, Amount greater than 2000).
If you set multiple conditions, you can group the selected conditions as follows:
- AND group (all conditions must be TRUE)
- OR Group (at least one conditions must be TRUE)
- NOT Group (all conditions must be TRUE)
To apply these filter settings to the document list, click the Finish editing button. The list of documents will be generated according to the defined filter.
The Order tab
To set the listing order, open the Order tab and click Add new order item on the toolbar (in the right pane).
From the available fields in the left pane of the form, point a field to be included in condition (which can be defined in the right pane) and click Select on the left toolbar. For each selected field (column) you can select the sorting order: Ascending or Descending. In the screenshot below, the ascending order should be applied to document dates, that is, earlier documents will be listed on top of the list.
If multiple fields are involved in conditions, the application will apply the conditions sequentially from top to bottom. For instance, if the Dates are Descending and the Amounts are Descending, then, for each date, starting the current, the current documents with largest amounts will be listed first.
The List Options dialog box. The Order tab
To apply these ordering settings to the document list, click the Finish editing button. The list of documents will be generated according to the settings.
The Conditional Appearance tab
Using this tab, you can conditionally change the position of specific fields in the document, font color and background color of specific fields.
The List Options dialog box. The Conditional Appearance tab
The Format column shows the names of formats applied on the same conditions to the same target fields.
The Condition column shows the conditions on which the formats are applied to the target fields.
The Formatted fields column shows the target fields to which these formats are applied.
To define the conditional appearance, click Add on the tab toolbar, and the Edit conditional appearance item dialog box appears.
The Edit conditional appearance item dialog box has the following three tabs:
- Appearance: Use this tab to select the required formatting parameters and specify their values.
- Conditions: On this tab, set the conditions for applying the formatting.
- Formatted fields: Here, specify the fields (columns) to apply conditional formatting.
The Edit conditional appearance item dialog box. The Format tab
For more detailed descriptions of conditional list formatting options, refer to Formatting Options for Lists.
Example of Conditional Formatting
For example, the rows with documents where the amounts are greater 5 and in Euro, we want to highlight in pink. The lines with these amounts will have the text aligned left.
For this, proceed as follows:
- On the Appearance tab, set the Background color parameter to the desired color (as on the screenshot above).
- Select the Horizontal position parameter and select Align right option.
- Open the Conditions tab.
The Edit conditional appearance item dialog box. The Conditions tab - Add the Document Currency field to table, set condition type to Equal to and set the value to EUR.
- Add the Amount field, select Greater Than as condition, and enter the lower limit.
- On the Formatted Fields tab, select specific fields to which the formatting will be applied. In our case, make no selections, and the formatting will be applied to all columns on the lines where Amount (EUR) >5.
The Edit conditional appearance item dialog box. The Formatted Fields tab - Click ОК to save the appearance settings and close the Edit conditional appearance item dialog box.
- To apply these settings to the document list, click the Finish editing button in the List Options dialog box.
The Invoices list with the applied formatting
The list of documents will be generated according to these settings as in the screenshot below.
Saving the custom formatting settings
You can save several sets of the formatting settings and use them as needed.
You can click the User-defined settings item properties button to add the conditional appearance setting to the custom set.
The Custom Item Settings dialog box
Click OK to save the settings and close the Custom item settings dialog box. Click Finish Editing to close the dialog box with list configuration settings.
Then, you can view the name of the custom settings (EuroSales as in our example) to the right between the toolbar and the document list (marked by red line).
The Grouping tab
To set groups, open the Grouping tab. Select fields for document grouping in the left pane of the dialog box and click Select on the tab toolbar. For example, we need to group documents by supplier company; for this, we select Company as grouping parameter.
The List Options dialog box. The Grouping tab
To apply these settings to the document list, click the Finish editing button. The list of documents will be generated according to the grouping settings.
The list of Invoices Received with documents grouped by company
The screenshot presents the result of grouping by company; you can click the node with supplier name to view the list of invoices received from this supplier.