What is a general notes template?
Summary
This article explains what a general notes template is and how best to use them.
More Information
Throughout Platinum there are several sections where you can add General Notes to a record, e.g., Stock Codes; Customers and Suppliers; Units; Order Items. These notes can be used in various ways - they can be used on reports and other print-outs; they can be used for holding any sort of extra information.
Adding Notes
In this example, the use of the General Notes on a Customer Account will be used.
- Go to " Sales Ledger Customer File Maintenance Add or Edit Customers" and edit any Customer as an example.
- Use the "Notes" tab, or 'Click' the "Check Box" at the bottom left of the displayed window or press <Ctrl+F8>.
- Any extra information relating to that Customer can be entered in the space provided, with the option to stamp a Date and Time if required using the <F5> key.
- This text is also searchable.
- A "Tick" now appears in the check box to indicate that General Notes information has been entered.
Templates
You can use a ':' to indicate that you want to use a template. The cursor will be auto positioned after the prompt for that line when entering text.
 | 'Zone:' on a line would place the cursor after the ':' ready for you to enter a zone for that customer. |
Reporting
All General/Extra notes can be reported on from within the Report Generator by using the $NOTES{} funciton.
Information can be extracted from a "General Notes Template" by also using the above function.
| An example of a Customer general notes template could look like :
Zone : TWG Discount Structure : ZN Closed : Sat, Sun This information could be stored against all or some customers, if you wanted to range your report by only customer that had the "Zone:" prompt set you could enter the following in your range so that any customer that didn't have a zone set would not appear on the report.
The above would return 'TWG'. In your range to only report on customers that had a 'zone' set you would need :
to only report on customers in zone 'TWG' you would need : $LJUSTIFY{$SUBSTR_AFT{$NOTES{A42,1,"Zone :"}, "Zone :"}, 50} = "TWG" |
See also
- Creating a new customer or supplier
- Reporting on General Notes in the Report Generators
- Removing leading spaces
