News
Reusable items for Invoices, Estimates, and Projects
June 21st, 2009Many of you work on the same types of projects repeatedly and have been asking for a slick way to reuse or copy items from a “standard list”. Some of our competition offers this ability, but we were never quite satisfied with the way we’ve seen it implemented.
The usual solution is to offer you a place where you can “manage” these items, then you have to go through some sort of special step to include them in your project (or invoice). To us this seems like a hacked solution based on flawed interface design principles.
We’ve taken a different approach to the problem, which we believe is much more elegant than anything else out there.
Starting today, any line item you’ve created on any Invoice is available to be re-used simply by typing its name into the title field when creating a new item. All relevant attributes will be inserted into your form after selection of an existing item. This allows you to modify different properties if you feel the need.
There is no “management” of reusable items. All items you’ve created in the past are available to be reused. We’ve also added this feature with our Estimates and Projects, so you should experience the same workflow improvements there as well.
Keyboard Input
Finally, we took the time to optimize all of the new item forms for quick keyboard entry. Once you start creating items you should be able to use your keyboard to fill out your Invoices, Estimates, or Projects without touching a mouse. Quickly tab through the fields, hit enter to add a new item. Once your new item is inserted your cursor will return to the “title” field so you can add another item.
Simple, effective, elegant – we think you’ll agree.

