Job-Info
This command displays the Job Details dialog box, which lets you set the job specific information such as Customer, Installer, site address etc…
Here you enter the appropriate details for the current job so that they may appear on the various reports at the conclusion of the process when you print the proposals, quotations, cutting lists, order forms etc. The details of the respective people (Customer, Installer, Salesperson etc) are defined under Set-Up > People.
Customer/Installer/Builder/Sales Person Select the required parties to this job by clicking the […] button next to the field, and select from your list of previously defined people – see that section of the help.
Job No The job number for the job
Quote No The quote number. When you click the ‘…’ button to the right of the quote number field, a new quote number is generated and displayed in the quote number field. Once you have generated a quote number, you can still manually edit it. This button is not displayed for existing jobs.
The quote number details are found in a file called quotenumber.dat. Stored in this file is the most recently used quote number together with an optional suffix and prefix.
A sample quotenumber.dat file would be:
;Quote numbering file DEF:Q:1002: R END
where ‘DEF’ is a keyword, ‘Q’ is the prefix, 1002, is the most recent number and ‘R’ is a suffix.
You manage this file by using a text editor such as Notepad.exe or Wordpad.exe. Since unused quote numbers are not returned to a pool of quote numbers, it is best to generate the number when you know it’s a real quote.
In order to maintain a unique number across a network, it is necessary to set a common data file directory. Refer to the Set-Up > Preference Settings > System Preferences command for advice as to how to do this.
Order no. The order number – can appear on the Supplier Order form. This is for reference only and is not connected to any process outside this job.
Delivery area A drop down list of up to 10 items describing different delivery areas you may have. You may edit the delivery areas under Set-Up > Area-Names or edit the text file areas.dat to change the actual area names.
Site address The site address, up to 3 lines.
Start date The date to start the job.
Pickup date The date the material is to be picked up.
Delivery date The date the material is to be delivered to site.
Term The customer’s payment terms.
Map reference A street directory grid reference for the site.
Framing This option toggles from Timber to Steel so that the correct fastener is selected by the software.
Rafter Spacing Pre-defines the rafter spacing for your roof designs.
IMPORTANT NOTE about NOTES
With the release of version 9.0, a small change was made to this dialog box to make it more useful, as it was determined that very few (if any) customers actually used the last three variables – namely Job Type, Wind Zone and Roof Type. So the dialog box was modified as shown above to make these data fields available for use to add specific notes pertaining to each job, which could be Job Type, Wind Zone and Roof Type.
You can switch between these JobInfo options by setting the ‘switch’ in the System Preferences dialog.
So now the dialog looks like this and each little note box is a separate key text string so that these notes can be added to your report.
However, we didn’t change the Key Text String for each cell in case it messed up existing users who did in fact use Job Type, Wind Zone and Roof Type.
The 3 Key Text Strings in each location are:
Notes1 = ###WindZone
Notes2 = ###RoofType
Notes3 = ###JobType
And these are the variable names that you use in your report templates if you wish to use these fields to add extra information to your reports as a job specific note.
Wind zone A descriptive string you can enter to describe the wind zone.
The most common use of this will be to provide additional fasteners or fixings per tile or clips for areas that have high or cyclonic wind categories.
To define a zone save the details to a file called WindZones.csv.
Job type A descriptive string you can enter to describe the job type.
Roof type A descriptive string you can enter to describe the roof type.
When you click [OK], the values are saved for this job.
Note: It is not essential to fill in all of the fields if they are not applicable to your business. Indeed, you can skip the Job-Details section if you are unaware of the details of the job at the early stages of a quotation.
The values you enter may be automatically inserted onto the reports and drawings you create for the job. If you don’t fill out those fields, then the information won’t be printed. The dates (install, pickup and delivery) default to being ‘today’s date’.
Customise the Job-Info Dialog
The [Job Details] dialog may be used as supplied or it may be customised to collect your specific information. Information that pertains to your particular line of work. For example, if you’re involved in digitising aerial photographs you might edit the information contained in the dialog box so that it displays different labels against each field in the dialog. – for example:
The file that defines the new field labels is called JOBPROMPTS.DAT and must be saved in the User folder. It is most likely that this file does not exist in your …/User folder, so create it using a text editor such as Notepad.exe. Simply open Notepad (or Wordpad), setup as described below and save the file as JOBPROMPTS.DAT in your ../User folder. The dialog box will now have different labels.
The values you enter will be automatically inserted onto the reports and drawings you create for the job. If you don’t fill out those fields, then the information won’t be printed, so it needs to be filled in for each job, either at the start or sometime during the job.
This process simply changes the label next to each field. To have these details then transfer to your reports you must use the same key text strings.
In this example:
Customer ###JobNumber
<Delete>
Project No. ###OrderNumber
<Delete>
Site Address ###JobAddress1
###JobAddress2
Bing Address ###InstallDate
<Delete>
<Delete>
<Delete>
Latitude ###MapRef
Longitude ###Term
<Delete>
<Delete>
<Delete>
<Delete>
<Delete>
Or another alternative, simply change the field label...
