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Some of the base tables like Customers and Items have fields like Name and FullName that are used by QB to distinguish between the name of a child record and the full name of the child record with it's parent's name.

For example the Name of an item might be "Widget" which is a Sub Item of "Widget Assembly".

The Full Name of "Widget" would be "Widget Assembly":"Widget".

It looks like the standard Method screens use [FullName] as the primary key field in grids and table links, and screens that create new items just uses the [Name] field and a field for the parent item for screen entry.

Presumably Method or QB will create the contents of [FullName] to appropriately combine the [Name] field and parent field.

Is there a general recommendation for screen design with respect to creation and edits of Items, Customers, and other lists that use Full Names, and Names?  For example, can we just populate the [Name] field and FullName is always created in the background?  For all tables with FullName?

The Customer List screen also pre-fills the Bill Name [BillAddressAddr1] with a copy of the contents of the Company Name, or Customer Name, but I cannot find an Action that is doing this.  It's a great time saver for data entry and helps prevent typo errors that I would like to be able to take advantage of.

This is a low priority curiosity.

Thanks,

James

 Hi James,

On its own, Quickbooks does some of the work associated with prefilling fields for you, (sans Method). As an example, when creating a 'child object' (say a customer job), Quickbooks will automatically copy over some data (such as address, phone number, email, etc.) from the 'parent object' (say a customer).

However using customized actions, you can also configure fields in Method to have a similar functionality, where information entered into certain fields is coppied over to a different field. Though it is outside the scope of this post to address the exact objective you personally are trying to achieve, we encourage you to play around with Method actions.

Should you have further questions about customizing your fields for your specific needs, kindly let us know, and we'll arrange to have our customization expert contact you.

Regards,
Denis

Denis,

Thanks for the reply.  I can understand what you're saying about the answer being related to customized Actions.

For example the Customer screen in Method uses an Action sequence to replicate the value from Name into FullName and also the Bill To Name field.  The FullName field is also configured as Read Only to enforce an exact match between the contents of the two fields.

So, I guess it would be correct to answer my own question by saying that within Method duplication of field values for the various name fields is always done by Actions configured to fields or objects within Screens.  Unlike, QB, there is no "behind the scenes" duplication, and these same actions can be customized and used elsewhere to automatically populate fields with duplicate values.

Of course, I think this may be too simplistic to describe what is happening to FullName and Name fields when Parent Items are used, or how QB might handle unique values in these fields,  but as you say, that's probably too much to take on without a specific example or requirement.

Cheers,

James