Are there columns in Sage which you always tab over and skip when you are entering data in your Sage 50 or Instant Accounts package? Fields like extra reference, department code and project are not used by many companies and yet they appear on many of the data entry screens. Then I have an excellent tip for you.
- Right click on the column headings.
When I was taking my annual Sage Accreditation course a few years ago the trainer did something I had never noticed before – he right clicked on the column titles in the Batch Supplier Invoices data entry screen, and a little list came up with ticks showing which columns should appear. You can then tick or untick so only columns you actually use appear in the data entry screen.
This was something that had been available in Sage for a while, but had never been listed as a new feature – apparently the feature had been available for a while but appeared with no fanfare – and yet it is something I demonstrate when I am training both experienced and novice users and a feature that is very popular. It makes entering the data much less confusing for novice users with fewer columns to fill in and much speedier too.
- Right click on the customer list title bar.
Also if you follow the same trick in other parts of the program, you can customise the columns you see in the Customer List, Invoice List, Order List and on many other screens too. If one of the default columns shown such as credit limit is not relevant to your use of Sage then you can remove it from the display and add far more useful columns – the Average Time to Pay column available in Sage 50 can be quite an eye opener! Just look at my screen shot to see all the column options you have in the customer list screen.
So why not customise your Sage windows to make you data entry easier, or your screen displays more relevant to your business. Remember also another quick tip: once you have the information in the screen just the way you want it you can use the ‘Print List’ button at the bottom of the screen to send it to print, click ‘To Excel’ or in older versions go to the main menus you can choose File-> Office?Microsoft Integration ->Contents to Microsoft Excel to dump the screen view in Excel.
For more great tips take a look at the posts tagged ‘Sage Tips’ on this blog.
[…] displays in all parts of the software, far too many to mention. I have done a previous post on customising your view in sage, so take a look at how to change your column displays again and you will see the extra information […]