I mentioned this issue in this post, which is now closed, and I’m not sure whether it was noted.
When I’m tagging a “money out” transaction as a “payment to a supplier”, and then choosing the option to “create a new invoice for this payment”, I’m trying to add a supplier reference that is 27 characters long, in the following place:
But this field is limited to 25 characters, so my reference is being truncated.
However, QuickFile is already able to handle supplier refs up to 30 characters, since it’s possible to edit the purchase after the event to get the longer length to stick.
And it’s also possible to state a longer supplier ref in the following screen (when creating a new purchase from scratch, i.e. not via tagging):
So it seems like the supplier ref field in the “create new purchase” dialog which opens after tagging a transaction should not be limited to 25 characters, but 30 characters instead?
Maybe, but I think the character limit for a particular bit of information should be the same across all dialogs, regardless of whether or not you’re a power user.
@Paul_Courtier I don’t think it’s unrealistic at all for the dev team to know that the same information is capable of being input via a couple of different dialogs, so that if they increase the limit in one place then it should also be increased in another.
I suspect that there is just one database field for this information (a supplier reference for the purchase record), so this has already been increased in the back-end and doesn’t need to be increased again. It’s likely just a character limit imposed on the input field in one part of the website versus another, and it might take 5 minutes to find it and fix it.
Any producer of software will surely appreciate feedback like this, which (if acted on) will help to make their software even better than it is already (and it is already excellent). If the dev team don’t want feedback like this then I’m more than happy not to take time reporting it… just let me know
With respect. It’s not just the purchase ref box. There are plenty of others.
I’d also recommend you read up on mysqli, vchar and int character limits.
I’d also think about the amount of users continiously polling the server and the increase in memory needed for each increase in character limit due to the change.
OK, well in that case, I agree that the dev team should just update one input field and leave it there, because it’s easier that way
I do plenty of work with SQL databases. As I said in my previous post, I’d imagine that the supplier ref associated with a purchase record (which is what I’m talking about here) is stored in just one place… in a purchase records table, with each purchase record in the table having a unique ID. In a relational database model, the supplier reference in that table doesn’t need to be duplicated in different tables, but can be referenced via the ID of the purchase record. So I’m not suggesting that storage requirements are increased, because the relevant database field is already big enough to hold 30 characters. I suspect that it’s just a front-end inconsistency where different input fields have different length limits applied. Wouldn’t have any effect on storage or bandwidth or resource usage, and wouldn’t bring the QuickFile systems down. Just my guess, may be wrong. In any case, if it were my software, it’s something I’d appreciate being informed about.
I didn’t say it had to be or indeed was duplicated. I was talking about character length of every box that had a limit and the associated memoryincrease in datbase requests.
Well I’m not sure what you mean by memory increase in database requests but in any case this is really a complete non-issue from a technical point of view, it’s just a user interface issue. The relevant field in the database is clearly already capable of holding 30 characters, so that’s already factored in, and I don’t think that sending an extra 5 characters when hitting “Save” is going to bring the Internet down or crash the QuickFile systems when those 5 extra characters are received and stored… it doesn’t have these drastic effects when input via the New Purchase page (which is already set up to accept up to 30 characters for the supplier ref).
Looks like the supplier ref has now been limited to 25 (rather than increased to 30) in all places (even when creating a new purchase from scratch, where it used to be possible to enter up to 30 chars)… which is fine… at least it’s now consistent which is the main thing
