Invoicing

[datadutch]

Hi guys

First of all many thanks for this forum. I've been setting up a database and even the simplest tasks would have taken me days without your help. In the end the solutions I find are really simple, but the road to the solution is only possible thanks to you all. Now that my database is taking shape I'm tackling the "invoicing" function I need. I just want to make sure I /will/ manage because it's one of the more important features.

I've made a query ("opendeclarations") in my database that holds all the items that are to be invoiced. The colums are
"declarationnumber","customername","customeraddress","description","price"

One "declarationnumber" can occur with several lines "description" and "price" but always to the same customer.

What I'd like to do is make invoices that have aggregated the "description" and "price" items in a column, one invoice for each "declarationnumber". All I've managed with the report generator is a stupid dump of the query I had anyway.

Your help is very much appreciated, again

Best regards
chris


PS the database is on a local MySQL server and I've connected with LibreOffice Base 3.5.7.2

[MTP]

I'm not for sure since I've never used the report generator; I suspect you may get the functionality you are looking for better with what Base calls a "form" than with what it calls a "report".

Have you looked at any of the tutorials or examples of invoices and leveraging sub-forms? One possible setup is a mainform that can navigate between declarationnumbers, one slaved subform that will show customername and customeraddress, and a second subform (also slaved to the mainform) with a table control showing the columns with the relevant description and price items.

[datadutch]

Indeed I can get the information I need together on a Form with subform (Thanks to the tutorials on this forum). The reason I suggested a report is because I'd like to run a batch of invoices at the end of the month, to be sent as pdf by email. I assumed forms weren't suited, but please do correct me. In the meanwhile I'm looking for something like a subform on a report, but found nothing yet..

[MTP]

Ah, I see where making a batch of invoices would be more challenging.

Non-report ways I can think of involve macros. You could make a form that will show a single invoice, and make a macro that will open a fresh Writer document, copy the displayed invoice information, insert a page break, go to the next record in the form, copy the displayed information, insert a page break, and repeat until it got to the end. Or, in Calc, the "opendeclarations" query could be brought into some hidden cells. A macro could refresh the query and then format all the information from the query into the print area of a sheet.

As far as reports, as I said I haven't used them. Maybe there's a group function that would display as you want without a subform? You could concatenate the declaration number, customer name, and customer address into a single field of the query if "group by" only allows one field. Perhaps someone more familiar with reports will stop by and let us know if what you want can be done with them.

[F3K Total]

Hello datadutch,
just guessing from you name, you're a dutchman? Maybe you can understand some german? If so, this can be interesting for you:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/imag ... te_V35.pdf
R