Is Tap Forms suitable for invoicing and payment reports?

[Lane Robinson]

First, I think it is, but before I blow the trial window with my sporadic time I can commit to testing, I thought I ask about a few key bits of functionality I’ll need. I have a dusty background in sql for web, so I tend to think in terms of table and records and fields and may not be using the terms standard for Tap Forms. I apologize for not yet fully groking how this works from videos and what I’ve read in the forum. I do need to get my hands on to have smarter questions.

(I also wonder how many other filmmaker refugees are here :)

What I need is a way to sell ads for something like a magazine that’s published once a year, generate an invoice per customer that may have purchased multiple ads, and track payments received, payments deposited.

Each customer may buy multiple ads at varies sizes. The sizes with price are from a ‘table’ with records for each ad size and it’s price. When making an ad order I would like a popup list showing a list of those items based on this other table. I choose a size, it fills in the price.

The way I currently enter ad sales is when viewing a form for a specific customer where I add a record for a new ad (with price filling in) and choose additional details from popups for things like ad dimensions, ad location, etc. I create a new record for each individual ad, but that’s showing under a form for a customer. Or I could instead view a different form that is ad centric where I generate a new record and select from a popup the customer name/ID number, but I’ll still want to see the other ad sales for that customer on that same page.

I’ll require an invoice form that shows a list of each ad purchased with price, a sub total, a discount, and total.

I think this next concern works, where it will present an autocomplete list based on what’s already been entered in a field previously. Is that correct? I would use this so many places as it makes it appear as though I never have typos. :)

I also require a payments ‘form’ that can show multiple payment records from a customer and how much is still owing. Some customers basically pay a deposit (one record) and then later the balance (another record). On these records I also enter cheque details including cheque number, date of cheque etc.

I also require various report pages that basically summarize things like a total sales for the year form, a list of customers that still have an outstanding amount to pay, and other forms I’m sure I can do if I can do those first two.

I hope the above makes some sense.

I’d also like to say that reading this form is a pleasure. Good people treating each other well. Nice!

• This topic was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Lane Robinson.

[Brendan]

Hi Lane,

Thanks for your interest in Tap Forms!

Tap Forms uses pretty much the same terminology. The only difference being a Form is just a table. Records, fields, etc. are all the same. Although Tap Forms does have the concept of a Table field which is just a field that can contain multiple sub-fields and sub-records. Similar to a Link to Form field, but without the actual form to link to.

All the things you describe sound very much like the Invoices template I made a while ago.

You can download it from this forum post on the Template Exchange forum:

Invoice Tracking Template

Some of what you’ve described are just relationships between forms with the Link to Form field. There’s information here about relationships in Tap Forms:

https://www.tapforms.com/help-mac/5.3/en/topic/relationships

And yes, Tap Forms does have a “Use Auto-complete” function you can enable that will take all of the values entered into that field previously in other records and build a popup menu that you can choose from as you start typing. You can also create fixed lists of values which I call Pick Lists.

I’m also very happy to see you spelling cheque properly :)

Thanks!

Brendan

[Lane Robinson]

Thanks for much for responding with something that looks useful for me to review. I appreciate having a template to examine as well. When I see a good window of time I can dig in, I’ll download the trial see how it goes. I expect it will go well.

I see you’re from Alberta. I’m from Manitoba. Nice to see a great product from Canada.

cheers,
Lane

[Brendan]

I thought that might be the case!

I used to live in Winnipeg. For many years before we moved to Calgary. Most of my family still live in Winnipeg and surrounding areas.

[Chris Ju]

I can definitely confirm that you can map really complex business processes with TapForms. With lists and Java Script support (see Java Script documentation on the homepage) you can really automate nearly everything…

[Lane Robinson]

Thanks for those comments Chris.

So I’m a used to be programmer who hates javascript. I’ve dipped into it here and there. And while I might end up needing to use it, I am very deeply hoping I don’t need to! But at least it’s not AppleScript, which might be Dante’s ninth circle. :P

[Lane Robinson]

lol. So I haven’t yet had time to dig into the trial version to see if it’s going to work out for me, but then I go and notice a Black Friday sale (wasn’t looking or expecting that) so now I HAVE to buy it. :p I’ve read enough in the forums and the docs to be convinced it should work out just fine. go ahead Black Friday, take the last of my money!

[Brendan]

The nice thing about JavaScript in Tap Forms is that you don’t have to worry about all of that DOM junk you have to deal with when writing JavaScript code for a web browser.

Here’s a simple example:

function countPhotos() {
   var photo_id = 'fld-....';
   var photos = record.getFieldValue(photo_id);
   if (photos != undefined) {
      return photos.length;
   } else {
      return 0;
   }
}

countPhotos();

Not too bad if you’ve got some sort of programming background. And even if you don’t there’s plenty of examples on this site you can learn from.

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