User Defined fields are designed to be used as ‘extra’ fields that you may have need for, but don’t have a dedicated field for. They can be used for all manner of different purposes (generally for reporting purposes) . They exist for Customers, Products, and Product Web Information.
The Configuration of a User Defined Field
The first thing you’d need to do is decide on which field number to dedicate for the purpose, and then give it a name. To do this, navigate to Misc Configurations > User Defined Field Label’s . After deciding on which number User Defined field to use, enter a label in here for it’s purpose.
Note; Labels for these fields can be modified to display a different label , however the ‘(UD#)’ will always remain.
Customer User Defined Fields
This will allow the user up to 10 different notional fields which can be used to group or define customers further. The first 6 fields are alpha-numeric, and are 6 characters in length, and the remaining 4 are alpha-numeric, and 24 characters in length. Each field should only be used for a single purpose. Once customers have been defined using these fields, they can be used in Report Generator.
Some examples of purposes for these fields might be to mark specific customers you want to market towards, or perhaps those you want to mark as bad debtors.
Note: These are examples only. It is up to the user to decide the purpose for each field.
Once the labels have been defined in Misc Configurations, they will appear as entered under the User Defined button in Customer Maintenance.
In this example, Customer User Defined Field 10 is used to mark Customers that are bad debtors. Because of this, the label has been entered as “BAD DEBTORS”.
Once the label has been defined, the field can now be used for that purpose. Navigate to Customer Maintenance, bring up the Customer Record, then go to the User Defined button. In there, the label will be displayed as entered on the Configuration screen, with a white field to the right of it.
The white field is where the data is to be entered. Consistent data needs to be displayed in this field in order to report on it.
For example, entering a Y in each User Defined field 10 as shown below will mean that when reporting on this field, the qualifiers only need say “Y”. If there is a mixture of “Y” and “Yes”, it will be a lot harder to report on this field.
Product User Defined Fields/Product Web Data User Defined Fields
For products, you might want to mark some with use by dates, or those you want to use for consignment.
Note: These are examples only. It is up to the user to decide the purpose for each field.
Fields 1 to 6 are alpha numeric, and 12 characters in length, and fields 7 to 10 are alpha numeric, and 24 characters length. Each field should only be used for a single purpose.
Similarly, the same kind of fields exist when using the Product Web Data area, if using a website. These fields can be used for the same purpose, in segregating Products to do with website information.
Note: This will not be used on the website itself, it is simply to be used for internal reporting purposes.
Product User Defined Codes
The User Defined Codes are designed for the same purpose as User Defined Fields, the only difference being that they are made up of less characters. If, for example, you simply wanted to segregate products or Suppliers using a single character code, then you could use User Defined Codes as opposed to User Defined Fields.
These codes are found under the Product Maintenance > Status Flags Button.
User Defined Code 1 – 1 alpha-numeric character in length
User Defined Code 2 – 1 alpha-numeric character in length
Note: If you are using the Backordering System, the contents of these fields will display on the Backorder Report on the far right but will not display a heading.\
Supplier User Defined Codes
Similar codes are provided for segregation of Supplier Records. These are found on the main screen in Supplier Maintenance.
User Defined 1 – Up to 12 alpha-numeric characters in length
User Defined 2 – Up to 12 alpha-numeric characters in length
