How to

How to search a list and save the search

You want the customers in Spokane who still get paper bills, or every unpaid invoice over $500 that's past due, or the work orders scheduled but not complete. One search box can't ask that. Every list screen in BasicBMS (Customers, Inventory, Invoices, Work Orders, Suppliers, Purchase Orders and Service Points) has the same search bar: a quick-search box, plus filters you stack as chips. A search you run every week can be saved and run again with one click.

Before you start

  • You can open the list. Each screen needs its own role; searching invoices needs invoice admin.
  • You have an employee profile on your login. Saving a search needs one; running a search doesn't.
  • Know which properties your company keeps on its records (custom fields such as Terms or InvoiceDelivery). They show up as filters too.

Steps

  1. Open the list, for example Customer → Management.

  2. For a quick look, type in Quick search and press Enter. On Customers it matches the name or customer number; on Invoices, the invoice number or customer name.

  3. Click Filter. The Filter by list groups the fields under headings such as Details, Address, Contact and Properties. Click one, say City.

  4. Pick the operator under the field name: contains, is, starts with, is empty or has a value for text; on, after, before or between for dates; =, >, < or between for amounts.

  5. Enter the value and click Apply. A chip appears, such as "City is Spokane", and the list reruns.

  6. Add more filters the same way. Each chip narrows the list further. For a pick-list field like State, tick several values in one chip ("State is WA, OR") to mean either one.

  7. Click a chip's text to change it; click its × to remove it. Clear removes every chip and the quick-search text.

  8. To keep the search, click Saved, type a name in Save current search as… and click Save. The app says Saved "".

  9. Next time, click Saved and click the name. The chips, the quick-search text and the sort come back exactly as saved.

Two rules worth knowing. Separate chips are joined with and; the values inside one chip are joined with or. And a property nobody ever set counts as its default value, so "InvoiceDelivery is Paper" also finds the customers who were never switched from the default.

Sharing a search. The whole search lives in the page address. Copy the URL and send it to a coworker; it opens with the same chips. Saved searches themselves are yours alone.

Totals follow the search. On Invoices, the Count and Total at the bottom add up every match, not just the rows on screen.

What posts behind it

Nothing. Searching and saving searches only reads your records; no entry is written to the ledger.

When it won’t let you

Give the search a name (up to 100 characters). The name box is empty or too long.

That search is too large to save. A search over 8,000 characters, usually a pick-list chip with hundreds of values ticked. Split it.

Saving a search needs an employee profile. Your login isn't tied to an employee. An administrator can link one.

Searching invoices requires the invoiceadmin role. The screen's role is missing from your login. Other screens name their own role.

Search is unavailable. The filter list couldn't load. Refresh the page.

What this doesn't do

You can't build or across different fields ("City is Spokane or State is OR"), and there are no nested groups. Saved searches can't be shared, made company-wide or set as a screen's default, and saving under an existing name replaces it without asking. Property values are stored as text, so properties can't be compared with > or <. Each screen searches only its own records; there is no search across all of BasicBMS at once. And the old Inventory pattern syntax (^, $, |) is gone; starts with and multi-value chips replace it.

Related

Stuck on this one? Call (509) 955-0770 and we'll walk through it with you.

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