Insert Subtotal
The other day, Todd Salkovitz - who is managing our Canadian release of AccountEdge - dropped a folder on my desk. I’m sure he must have said something about it, but I was knee deep in testing our new registration system. Side bar: we’re working on replacing our current Registration/Confirmation system.
The folder contained about 50 paper surveys from 1999 that our Certified Consultants filled out during a conference in the infamous Wish List session. Also included was a rough analysis of our customer wish list database and our own internal wish list.
I was pleased to see that all of the features that we added in the releases that came after that 1999 session were the direct result of feedback from customers and consultants. One of the items on the list which I now remember working on as product manager was Insert Subtotals and Headers on invoices.
I completely forgot about that feature. It would have come in handy in a few presos I had to give over the last couple of years, and I wonder how many of our users aren’t aware of this feature or simply forgot about it like I did.
When working on an invoice, if you right mouse click, you can select Insert Subtotal. You can also select this from the Edit menu. Any sales lines above this will then be subtotaled up until it sees another sub total. You can also then insert a header. This is really handy, especially if you want to break out services from items you are selling.
This got me thinking about why I forgot all about this feature. The problem is that you would only know it’s there if you use the right mouse click or found yourself surfing around the menus. Is it worth a change to the UI to give this feature more attention? That’s a tough one.
AccountEdge and Premier Accounting have been around a long time, and with each upgrade we add new features and enhancements. It becomes difficult keeping the UI simple and clean with such deep applications. Sure we could add a button or widget of some kind but by doing so we make the UI busier. But keeping it in the Right Mouse Click menu, it’s somewhat hidden. Possibly users expect insert/delete... from this menu and will learn about these options along the way.
For now, we’ll keep it where it is. But I’m going to keep my mind open to new approaches for when/if we redesign this window.