One of the fields on the Main Invoice Screen is the General Invoice Code.  It's located in the upper right hand corner of the screen and is abbreviated as "Gen."

You make up your own code.  One, two or three letters, numbers or combinations of letters and numbers may be used.

To enter the codes and the names of the codes, select MAIN TASK >> VIEW/MODIFY CODE LISTS >> GENERAL INVOICE CODE LIST.

On the dialog box that appears, you'll be able to add or modify general invoice codes.  In the first column, type in a code.  In the second column, type in a name for the code.

You can set the code field so that it always capitalizes the code--or you can set it so that is case sensitive.  In a case sensitive code, "A" and "a" are considered different code letters.

An 'All Capitals,' setting make things easy if you just have a couple of codes.  Use case sensitive when you have lots of codes.

NOTE: If decide to select All Caps, use caution if you later decide to switch to Case Sensitive.  When you change from ALL Caps to Case Sensitive, you may find that the previously entered codes on this spreadsheet AND on the invoices may change.  Previously entered codes which were in all capitals may turn to lower case.  If you decide to stay with the change, look carefully at this spreadsheet AND at your invoices.  Do a thorough check to make sure the codes are in the case that you want.  If not, you'll need to make appropriate corrections.

As mentioned above, the primary use of General Invoice Code is to produce sales reports.  (There are other uses as well which will be described further down on this page.)  Two methods are available to run sales reports using a General Invoice Code:

Method 1. Select MAIN TASKS >> MASTER LIST OF SALES REPORTS >> SALES REPORT BY GENERAL INVOICE CODE.  This brings up a spreadsheet of your codes.  You can select which codes you want and a report will be generated.  The report will list total sales, taxable sales, etc. for each code.  The advantage of this method is that you can run as many codes as you desire.

Method 2. Select MAIN TASKS >> YEARLY SALES  or MAIN TASKS >> SALES & SALES TAX REPORTS.  From the dialog box that appears, select the Invoice Code option.  The report will list total, taxable sales and a number of other categories for the selected code.  The disadvantage of this method is that you can only run one code at a time.  There is one advantage, however.  You can run reports for one-character code.

The code may be particularly helpful with some states or government entities where you are required to report retail and wholesale sales.  You can code those which are considered retail with an "R" and those which are considered wholesale with a "W" (or some other code to your liking).

With the R and W codes, you could then run a report using either method above.  In Method 1, you can run both codes at the same time.  In Method 2, you would need to run first the Retail sales and then the Wholesale.

If you only need to use the code for one purpose, then you can use all three spaces in the code field.  You could, for instance, use "RET" for retail and "WHO" for wholesale.  If you need the code for more than one purpose, then you'll need to use one-character codes.

One-character codes can only be used with Method 2, but if you use one-character codes (consisting of one-letter or one-number), you can create up to three code systems.  Or, in other words, you can produce three different types of sales reports. But…note that the use of one-character codes is becoming less important with the newer versions of AnyOrder.  Level IV added new codes such as Ad Campaign code which can be used for general invoice coding purposes if desired.  User Defined Fields can be used for coding.

Nonetheless, the one-character code system has been retained for those that have used this system in past versions of AnyOrder and would like to continue to use it.  More information: One-character Codes

Using the Code for Other Purposes

While designed for use with sales reports, the invoice code can be used for other purposes.  You can, for instance, use the code for creating mailing lists.  As an example, you may decide to have a mailing list of customers that purchased wildlife books by placing a "W" code on invoices of wildlife purchasers.

Note that you can also utilize User Defined fields for setting up mailing list codes.  The longer size of the fields enables you to use more descriptive code names.

For mail list purposes, the code would not be used for generating sales reports.  Thus, you would not use method 1 or 2 as described above.  Rather, you would use the code as a filter in the mailing list portion of the program.

For example, let's say you want to generate a mailing list for wildlife purchasers.  By setting the filter (available when preparing mailing lists) to the "W" code, the mailing list would include only those with "W" code.  By the way, the filter formula for using the code this way would look like InvCode="W".

You could also use one-character codes for the filter.  Let's assign "W" for wildlife purchasers and "B" for bird book purchasers.  To filter for wildlife books, the filter would look like: "W" $ InvCode. To filter for bird books the filter would look like "B" $ InvCode. To filter for customers that bought both wildlife and bird books, the filter would look like InvCode="WB."  More information: filters.