Ideas for next version of TS

[StevenSasnet]

I wrote this originally to Bill directly who asked that I post it for
the group to see and reply:

Bill, so I'm getting ready to upgrade to Lion and note that Filemaker
9 doesn't play nice with it and upgrading to 11.0v4 will cost $300 and
all I use it for is invoicing, so I'm thinking maybe it's time to
migrate to using TS as my invoice system. How silly to copy/paste your
TS data into FM anyway. Right?

I've read your invoice Help file and worked with the invoices on and
off today and have the following input, questions and ideas:

1. My logo is more rectangular than your space is sort of square-ish
(96 x 48)

http://www.sasnet.com/files/sasnetlogo.gif

When reduced to 96px wide I end up with this too small logo which
isn't appealing:

http://www.sasnet.com/files/sasnetdesign72.jpg

Is there any way to have more space for our logos?

2. In order to use Address Book, you have to delete the words "invoice
to" to have the <invoice to> field blank or AB won't copy into the
field. This should be mentioned in your help doc IMHO.

3. Is there any way to format the info in the <invoice to> field?

4. Invoice Template: Could you give us a way to make invoice templates
so we don't have to re-create all the info like adding: logo, Make
Payment to, the large text field, each time? I need to send 10
invoices and have to manually set up each one's layout 10 times, which
is kind of a deal breaker regarding ease of use.

Imagine a tab in the Control Panel for "Templates" where we define
invoice template(s) and then in the "Invoices" tab in the Control
Panel, in addition to: Name, Date , PO#, Inv#, Sent, Paid Filter...
you would add a "Template" pulldown menu to select which template
you've previously set up to use. How cool! It would make multiple
invoicing MUCH easier.

5. Can we remove the "Description" column from the invoice layout? I
don't find it needed at least for me.

6. Past Due. Is there a way to show past due amounts? Or would you
recommend just flagging previously unpaid records so they show again
in your next invoice and maybe adding "Past Due" in the being of the
Comments field perhaps? Only problem with this approach though is that
an unsuspecting client could pay a record item twice this way unless
it could be earmarked Past Due in some way so they don't.

7. A space to explain Expenses would be important I think. I see that
I can use the large open text field for this actually. But since
there's not footer for me to put my company info, I have to put it
there and it takes up a bit of room.

8. A "Sent" checkbox column in the Records Window would help for
invoices that have not been paid yet. So you'd have some Flagged so
you can include them in new invoices, but once sent, they'd unFlag and
get a check in Sent checkbox. If you could automate this so when we
check Sent in the Invoice window, it checks in the Records window that
would be great!

9. Lastly, it would be great if we could customize the invoices such
as:
-a. Adjusting the size of the <invoice to> field
-b. Increase the space for our logos as previously mentioned in #1
above
-c. Increase the size of the large text field to the left of the Time,
Expenses, Charges field, etc..
-d. Increase the size of the <Make payment to> field.
-e. Add a <footer> field at the bottom of the page so we could set up
a professional looking invoice with our biz address there.
-f. Increase text size of the word "Invoice" at the top of the page

http://www.sasnet.com/files/invlayout.jpg

For those that made it this far, Bill mentioned that he always thought
of TS as a time tracker and not an invoicing system. To which I said
that having used TS from it's creation, I totally agree. But that all
changed when Bill introduced the ability to do invoices. I never paid
attention to them because I was already committed to using my
FileMaker system. But now with it's incompatibilities with Lion, I'm
rethinking FM and since TS has a built in invoice feature, with a few
additions and tweaks it could be, and now I feel should be, an a time
keeping system with full invoicing capabilities. This would require
however giving the user a bit more customization capability though.
But I think it's a winning and logical concept. After all Bill that's
no doubt why you introduced invoicing as a TS feature. Just my humble
opinion.

Hope this is helpful...
Regards,
Steven Shmerler

[Modesitt Software]

Steven,

Good questions, actually good suggestions. I'll try and get them incorporated into a future TimeSlice.

Thanks for writing.
-Bill

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