Hello,

The clients pane on the main window has become somewhat cluttered and not very useful at this point. There are clients whom I have no open projects with whee I did a one-time job mixed in with the clients I have open projects with right now.

What I would like to see is just the clients I have Active or Estimate projects with. For the others, is there some way to either archive them, hide them, or make them appear at the bottom of the clients list?

Also, in All, I'd like to be able to click a checkbox to apply the same filter to projects listed there.

Currently how I'm working is always viewing 'All' and then sorting by status so the Active's and Estimates are at least grouped together.

Any improvements made in this area would be greatly appreciated!

-Michael

I'll second this.

The long list of once-a-year clients is a but much to deal with, some days. And the All Projects up at the top of the clients panel - it would be nice to show all Active projects and not the slew of completed ones.

You're best option, and it's not a difficult one, is to create a Smart List for Contacts based on Creation Date. You can set the time period to: "In the Last 60 (or 365) Days". That, in essence, will "archive" any contact older than that. You can do a similar Smart List for your Projects.

Also, in case you weren't aware of it, you can drag a Smart List to the Top shortcut area and create a very easy and convenient means to jump to it, including a keyboard shortcut.

One more thing....

There are "Recent" smart lists for both Contacts and Projects and they might be a good way to quickly have a list of the contacts and/or Projects that you are currently working on.

Howard, what do you mean by Smart List? I've never seen anything like that in Billings.

Oh boy, this is really emabrassing! I didn't realize that the question posted was re. Billings! I assumed (badly so) that it was re. Daylite. Very sorry for the confusion.

Nevertheless, such "smart lists" would make a very welcome addition to Billings

quote:

Nevertheless, such "smart lists" would make a very welcome addition to Billings

Interesting request! Can you give some examples of smart lists you'd create if the feature was in Billings?

Smart lists I'd like to have...

Clients with active jobs
Clients who I've done work for in the last xx days
Clients I've done work for between xx date and xx date
Projects (active or completed) I've worked on between xx date and xx date
Active Projects that have not been touched/worked on in xx days
Projects that have pending totals yet to be invoiced (this one could be a report instead of a Smart list)
Invoices that are past the due date (again, a report would be better)

Back to the original question regarding archiving clients. I have over 50 clients that keeps growing, some of which I'll probably never do work for again and some of which I only work with once a year. I'd like to be able to "clean up" my client list so that the unneeded ones don't clog up the list. It would be nice to have nested folders that we could place seldom used clients in and collapse the folder.

I also have a problem with one client with over a dozen offices across the country. I do work for all of them and need to invoice each office independently. I don't want to have the same company listed 12 times, with 12 different addresses and contacts. This would just add to the cluttered client list. The way I've been working it is with 12 different entries in my Address Book and having to use the "Link to..." command to re-link to the office I need to invoice. The problem is that all the Projects for all the offices are grouped together. If I could use the nested folder option I would create a main folder for the company and then I could have clients for each office within it. This would be much simpler to keep track of what projects were from what office.

Food for thought

I'm in pretty much the same situation regarding clients, so a better solution for this kind of scenario is a must. Also, invoice numbers needs to be integrated better throughout the entitre application, as most communication with clients and accountant refer to the invoice numbers, so it is essentil to be able to view, list and search by invoice numbers. Smart lists should contain the ability to list by invoice numbers within the last years, or from the 1. january until current date or until 31. dec. for past years.