Method Community

What does the estimate line update do exactly? Please be specific. 

I'm talking about the upate in the standard screen at the bottom right hand corner of the estimate line. dhere are no actions in it. There are no loose focus actions in any of the fields on the estimate line grid. There are some posts that say the update just saves the data in the grid. There are posts that say it runs lose focus actions from each line.

It may do that, but it does alot more. It runs calculations and changes values in the grid. I see the results of the calculations, but I don't see the calculations themselves. Where are they? Are they hard coded in? 

The only actions i see in the standard estimate line grid are in the item field and they are a set of text change actions. That's it. There are no actions that update the amount after qty is entered. Is this action sequence hard coded?

Please explain in detail line by line, code by code, what happens when that update link is clicked, so we can make informed desicions before we do cusomizations for our clients in this grid.

(I'm not talking about a screen I have customized. I just want to know about the standard estimate screen.)

Thanks,

Lance,

There may be more, but the main calculation that takes place is updating the amount field with Qty X Cost(Rate) + Markup. I believe this takes place to prevent a situation where cost X qty doesn't equal the total. What are you trying to accomplish that is causing problems? If you want to be able to override the amount you can put actions in the Amount change to take the new amount and divide by the qty and update the Cost, though you do need to watch out for rounding thowing this off.

Hi Lance,

The EstimateLine grid's Update link saves the grid and refreshes it. My thinking is that it's simply a Save Grid action and a Refresh Grid action. It is hard-coded and non-customizable to ensure that we remain consistent with QuickBooks, and are not undermining the process by which QuickBooks would calculate these fields itself. Here is a summary of our stock EstimateLine fields and their purposes, to give some insight into how these fields are calculated:

Rate: This is automatically populated with the item's cost from QuickBooks. However, if there is no cost information in QuickBooks, this field will be automatically populated with the sales price.

MarkupRate: This is either a dollar amount or a percentage (as indicated by IsMarkupPercent) that is used to adjust the Rate. If there is also a sales price in QB, Method automatically adjusts the MarkupRate to reflect this difference. You can find the sales price in the SalesPrice field in the ItemService table.

IsMarkupPercent: "Yes" value lets Method know to calculate percentage markup to the Rate. "No" value simply adds the MarkupRate as a dollar amount to the Rate.

IsRatePercent: The % field in the stock Estimate screen. It can be used for items such as a discount item that performs a calculation using the item above it. For example, an item that calculates 10% off the item above it. If we uncheck this field, it would calculate $10 off instead of 10%.

Amount: The actual calculation seems to work in the following ways:

1. If IsMarkupPercent = Yes,      Rate x (1+MarkupRate/100) x Quantity   (Dividing the MarkupRate by 100 turns the percent to a decimal)
2. If IsMarkupPercent = No,       (Rate + MarkupRate) x Quantity
3. If MarkupRate = 0                  Rate x Quantity
   

TotalAmount: Used for totalling all amounts of items that belong to a group.

Hope this helps.

- Justin