Here is our second blog in our Summer Projects Series | One thing every Accounting Office has in common is that they have unique needs. This is especially true in the details of reporting. Funders increasingly demand measurable results on goals like homes weatherized, clients or students served, meals delivered, number of attendees, and the list goes on and on. Did you know that your Abila MIP Fund Accounting™ software can help you to record and report on these measurable outcomes? User Defined Fields (UDF) may be the perfect answer for you and summer is a a great time time to tackle this project.

There are three categories of UDFs: Master, Transaction Document, and Transaction Line/Detail records.

• Master records include user defined fields for maintenance or setup-type data, which is generally entered within the Maintain or Activities menus. Examples in this category include your Segments, Fixed Assets, Vendors, Customers, Charge Codes, and Employees (Payroll). If a master level field is created, a User Defined Fields tab will be added to the form in the system. You can connect the user defined field type of Charge Codes, Customers, and Vendors to certain Transaction Document and Transaction Line level records. Examples for a Vendor might include Prior ID Number or a Prior Name.

• Transaction Document records include user defined fields for transaction entry documents. If a document level field is created, a User Defined Fields tab is added to the Transaction Entry form. You can connect the user defined field type of Transaction Document to certain Transaction Line level records like AP Invoices, Journal Vouchers, Write Checks, AP Checks, and many more.

• Transaction Line/Detail records include user defined fields for transaction line items. If a transaction line level field is created, new columns are added to the existing transaction entry table. Examples of transaction line records include AP Invoices, AP Checks, Journal Vouchers, Budget, Encumbrances, Journal Vouchers and many more.

There are various types of UDFs including selecting a value from a list, currency, date, Yes/No response, number or string. Drop down value lists may be shared with other UDFs. Default values may also be assigned.

Tired of tracking the number of people served separately in Excel? Consider a UDF.

Adding UDFs to your database is a major decision. Having access to a Sandbox database that mirrors your live database is advised for testing purposes prior to impacting your live database. Soft Trac can provide assistance on the creation of a sandbox database for testing purposes.

Soft Trac is a woman-owned business and accomplished team of nonprofit software consultants.  We believe in making nonprofits "do good" better. 

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