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; Vehicles; 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 positioned after the prompt for that line.

'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.

Example

A example 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.

$LJUSTIFY{$SUBSTR_AFT{$NOTES{A42,1,"Zone :"}, "Zone :"}, 50}

The above would return 'TWG'.

In your range to only report on customers that had a 'zone' set you would need :

$LJUSTIFY{$SUBSTR_AFT{$NOTES{A42,1,"Zone :"}, "Zone :"}, 50} <> ""

to only report on customers in zone 'TWG' you would need :

$LJUSTIFY{$SUBSTR_AFT{$NOTES{A42,1,"Zone :"}, "Zone :"}, 50} = "TWG"

See Also

• Reporting on General Notes in the Report Generators
• Removing leading spaces

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Keywords AND Misspellings

general notes, templates