Daniel Shanahan
I'm enjoying learning more about SmartSuite. It is a very versatile and powerful tool. One area that I think is underdeveloped is the Order and Order Line process. These are generic terms. A data model looks like this: Customer --< Order --< Order Line >-- Item.
The "--<" means a one-to-many relationship.
The ">--" means a many-to-one relationship.
Order and Order Line are generic. Here are a handful of app relationships (or table relationships in data modeling terms):
Vendor --< Purchase Order --< Purchase Order Line >-- Item
Customer --< Sales Order --< Sales Order Line >-- Item
Customer --< Invoice --< Invoice Line >-- Item
Customer --< Return Order --< Return Order Line >-- Item
Warehouse --< Transfer Order --< Transfer Order Line >-- Item
My experience in SmartSuite (and maybe I'm doing this incorrectly) is:
  1. When creating a related line from the Order app detail screen, I'm taken to the Order Line detail screen. This is fine except I have to manually enter the related Order record as a link. It seems to me that SmartSuite should know that this Order Line needs to be linked to the Order from which I just came.
  2. I wasn't able to figure out how to have a lookup for the Title column. The best I could do was create a lookup for another column. I called that column SKU selector and the Title column as SKU, which automatically populates with the SKU selector. Too many steps.
  3. The SKU selector on the Order Line will set the SKU from the item. But I have to go half way down the Estimate Line layout to select it. It is more intuitive if it is the first field on the layout.
  4. The Price field is a lookup field; however, the price from the Item table doesn't come over when I link to an item in the SKU Selector field.
  5. On the Item app I have a Cost column and a Markup Percent column as a currency and percentage respectively. I have a Price column defined as a formula: [Cost] * [Markup Percent] + [Cost] to get the customer Price. But the result does not format as currency. I manually tried to force it by adding a "$" in front of the formula but then I lost the second decimal place if it was 0. I.e. $7.0 instead of $7.00
I hope this is not overwhelming. SmartSuite is really impressive! If you can crack this nut, then it would be a huge game changer for many service companies (think tree trimmers, gutter installers, HVAC, small appliance repair, electrical, pest control, etc.).