GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 676173
Feature suggestion: List of Customers, Vendors, and Employees
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:08:44 UTC
I have two suggestions for a future version of GNU Cash (I hope I'm submitting this to the correct place) which I believe will make it more user-friendly and, consequently, more attractive to business end-users who don't have a specialty in advanced computer skills: 1. On the "Business [menu] -> Customer [sub-menu] -> Find Customer [option]" dialogue (and the other "Vendor" and "Employee" sub-menus) we need either: 1.a. A button entitled "Show all" that simply lists all customers (because many users of commercial accounting software use features like this when they can't remember a customer name but can recognize it when they see it in a list, or they can recognize it as being near some other unrelated customer). 1.b. An additional table that is included as part of the dialogue (on the right-hand side of the options so that additional search criteria can extend naturally downward, as it does now, without shortening the list of customers) which lists all customers by default, and then gets narrowed down automatically as more search criteria is added. 2. In the main application window, a tabs that can be opened that list all Customers, Vendors, or Employees. This could simply be a copy of the "Find dialogue" that I just suggested (see item 1.b. above) but with an additional section below everything that shows more details about the currently selected record.
Thank you for your suggestions and, yes this is the right place to make them. 1. The search dialog will show all customers using the correct search criterion. To quote from the manual: "To return a list of all registered active customers, set the search criterion to matches regex, and place a single dot "." in the text field area. Make sure Search only active data is checked, then click Find. The regular expression "." means to match anything." An "all" button might be better though. I guess many new users wouldn't know what a regex (regular expression) is. 2. The development version already has this feature. Double clicking a customer/vendor/Employee opens the edit dialog. Additionally a right click allows the opening of a new invoice/bill/voucher.
1. Most users will find it to be a pain to have to always enter some search criteria just to view a list of the customers (vendors, employees, etc.), especially if they have need to use this feature frequently. Simply adding an "All" button is definitely better, or best is still to have option 1.b (above) that defaults to showing all entires, and then let search queries shorten the list accordingly (it would feel more interactive this way). 2. That's great!
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