Making Invoices in a Knack App

Questions about your Knack app? Let's Chat. https://www.knackbuilders.com​. Invoices are a common function within Knack database apps. Here I show you how the Objects and data should be structured to accomplish this.

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Full Transcript

hey folks dave parish here at knack

builders uh

today's video

i'm going to talk about

how to make invoices in a knack app

it takes a specific uh

object or data structure to do those

correctly

and i'm just going to go over the

process of how to do it and actually the

structure for

invoices you have an invoice

to which you can add many items so one

typical one-to-many type of structure

that can be applied in a lot of things

uh i just did another app

with uh

classes

uh in a school and very similar

structure you have a class

called something

certain dates whatever

uh that would sort of be like the

invoice and then to that class you're

going to add students

um

and the students would sort of be like

the products you're selling so again one

to many this is useful uh first time

i was doing it i didn't really know what

i was doing

uh and

i finally figured it out

and it really helps uh and invoices are

real

invoices or

orders pos whatever they're all the same

uh very useful i'll be back in a minute

thanks

[Music]

okay i'm back uh dave parrish at knack

builders going to be

talking about um

how to make invoices

in a knack app let's jump in

that is let's call them an app

okay

um

i'm gonna go through

the data structure the tables you need

um

and how they're related to one another

uh first clients this would be clients

customers or whatever you're gonna have

a list of those

typical stuff their name

don't number this one's an easy

every order is going to have

client

and then each client

can create an order or an invoice

um

so you're going to grab

what i call the boilerplate or native

stuff about

the

order or the invoice

which

actually has

not much to do with what they're

actually purchasing that's going to be

different you're just going to want to

know okay the client you know typical

step an order number invoice number

uh

client name the date of it

uh

in this case we're actually tracking

inventory too i'll touch on that but

that's a whole nother topic

products are coming from certain

locations

in this case i do an account

connection which ends up grabbing

whoever created the inward so you have

that

this is counting the number of

things they purchased it's also summing

each thing that is on the invoice so you

get a total

uh it's basic stuff okay

and then

i'm gonna jump down to this one items

these would be the products you're

selling this is

important and i'm gonna spend a little

bit of time on the difference

of

of what a product is

and what when that product

appears on an invoice those are actually

two different things

uh so a product would be typical you got

a product number description

what its

cost is

uh that is

you know largely in this case

these products they're distributing

different sort of hygiene products so we

got

you know the name of the product item

number

we can have an active or inactive status

on these so when you're choosing what

products to put

on an invoice you could filter it by

only once they're you're currently

selling because you don't want to get

rid of those what it cost is

that type of

okay

now here's the important one

i call in out items

because we're actually tracking

inventory on all this too some apps

would just create an inventory or

an invoice

for what was sold and to be charged you

can even have them pay for it with mac

uh e-commerce function

uh in this case we're tracking inventory

too

and um

so

when i do inventory i usually have one

main table that's looking okay what's

coming in meaning we're resupplying

what's coming out

we're selling

um

and also when you're doing inventory you

want to give them a ability to do a

manual

update to do a physical inventory it's

awful what the system says for whatever

reason they

adjust that on their own

but when

you're doing an invoice

again you're going to be

have a client you're gonna say i'll show

you the interface but you're gonna say

okay let's create a new order for this

client

date it's gonna capture who the client

is

um

whatever

boilerplate information you want about

it then you're going to add

items to it

but what

you're actually not doing you're not

actually adding

an item

in terms of the data here to it

you're adding an instance of that item

um and i'll show you how that works

because

an item is what it is it's a the name

part number

current value

you know those are some of the main

things

but when

you're applying it to an order there's

other variable information

um

one

could be quantity

uh so you need to be able to capture

that

you may have a discount structure you

have an item that has a current value

but maybe

your sales person has the ability to

adjust that

well that's going to be

a variable for an instance of that

product

so

it's important to understand

that concept an item is just denied when

you're selling it it is

an instance of you selling that item and

adding it to the

to the uh

to the invoice or order let's see what

we have here

so

obviously client order

a new order will have a connection to

the client

that's the main one

um

items don't necessarily need an instant

to the client because they're separate

but an instance of that item going out

these are the line items

on the invoice

we're gonna

it's gonna be automatically connected to

the order we're gonna grab who the

client is

in this case we're doing this

inventory

volume by location um

and then an instance of this item

is

um

you're gonna

you're gonna in the instance or the in

out you're gonna connect that to

the items so in this case

i'll get into this if you're selling

some particular product bathroom cleaner

product number whatever

you're gonna select that and then you're

gonna put the volume or the

the quantity and other type stuff

so

absorb that let's go over the pages side

see how this actually is working

i'm on the builder but you'll get the

deal so in this case

you'd log in

you'd go to a client

you look at that client and then you'd

say hey okay here's

here's

all this clients orders so we're going

to create a new order for that client

you're going to add in

see what this looks for

um

again date comments

and the location

very basic stuff now let's go to the

details of that

um

here's the order

you know all the boilerplate stuff up

top let's add a new item in this case

we're going to

this connects back to the items of the

list of products you have

and you're going to select which one

you're going to put in the quantity and

put in

whatever comments you have and let's see

what's driving some of these rules

record rules are important here

so when i add that

item to the particular

um

invoice i want to capture a bunch of

other information about it

who i want to native in this uh

in out or

line item to the order i want to grab

who the client is in this case the

location

the date

and

is it

for inventory purchases is it coming in

or out uh and this time it's outgoing

and it's an order

and this one's important too i've seen

the uh apps

where the cost of the line item

they

create an equation

that links directly to the

cost

or the price of

the item itself

um

now that seems like it might work let's

just whatever that item costs let's make

the line item of that item when it sold

the cost of that item well that really

doesn't work um

that can be a variable because over time

it is most likely

that value will change so you do not

want to link it directly to it

because

how that would work in practice is over

time if an item changed

the invoice from before the change

would its value would change too so you

go look up to an old

invoice

uh you've updated pricing

that invoice would be wrong it won't

reflect what's actually sold

what you'd rather do is you're going to

have that field it's the

value currency field

and you're going to say hey when i

create this line item i want to go look

at

the current cost

of that product

and i want to grab it

and insert it as the value i don't want

to link it i just want to go get it put

it in there

so if the price changed the next day

that value would be

the same it would not change that's an

important

part

part to look at here

um

that's largely it and i'm gonna recap

that

a little bit here you're gonna have your

client

that's easy

a client has an order

basic stuff boilerplate order number

uh invoice number um

date

you're going to have a list of your

products now

sometimes there isn't a list of products

you're selling one-off things

in that case you wouldn't need a list

every line item would sort of be unique

but most time you're going to be drawing

from some pool of products you're

selling

and then each product each time you sell

one of those products

you're

not actually selling the item itself

you technically are selling an instance

of that item and you're capturing

variable information about it uh

price

um

and quantity are the large one so that's

it folks hope that was helpful uh

appreciate your time thanks

hey i know i said i just was finished

with that but after looking at the video

i wanted to clarify one thing that's the

direction of these connections

uh

client

uh or actually client order and client

and client order are related but the

connection is right here

then you're usually the connection is um

in the direction of the child

so a client in a client order is the

child

client orders client to the child that

means the connection will reside in the

child so so when you're looking at the

records

i'm gonna have a whole other video on

this uh

the name of the client

is

appears in the child which is the client

order

but that's a pretty easy one

and this would be

similar in this direction

in out items the instances of an item is

a child

of items so

so we look over here we have

um

items

we see

that it's connected to the in out items

but the connection resides in the in app

right here

so it's one to many one item can have

many instances of it being sold let's go

to that

find it here item right here

these all look the same

um

each

instance of this item connects with one

item

and each item

connects with many make sure they're set

up like that

what that allows you is you can look at

any item

and you say you had a list of all your

items and you want to click down and see

the details it's going to show you all

the times it was sold

and you do that in the other direction

too you can look i mean that same thing

happened you look at the order obviously

you see all the items on it you can also

look at the client and see all the

everything they bought not just

all their

orders

but rather every single item directly

because they're all going to be

connected back and forth i just wanted

to clarify that

um

when you do your connection you're going

to initiate the connection from the

child

the one to many if

one again i always think of one to many

one many one client has many orders

one item as many times it can be sold

initiate it from the child swing and

which more specifically means that's

where you're going to see the name of

the connection

go back to here

here's the item the instance of it being

sold you see it in

the child record which is there it's

going to lead back to the parent

that's it hopefully that helped thanks