When setting up new inventory item, employees, or other records, it’s very important to get every setting right. Of course you’re in a hurry to set up the new employee so you can run payroll, or enter the new inventory item so you can issue a PO. But if you don’t get the details right, every transaction that uses that item will be affected. Fortunately, the fastest way to set up a new item can also help you get it set up correctly.
Even though you won’t find a copy button in the Maintenance windows, it is very easy to copy an existing customer, vendor, inventory item, employee, GL account, or job. Just bring up the record you want to copy in the appropriate Maintain window, and then type in a new ID. You’ve just created a new item, using all the data from the original item. All that is left to do is to update the name/description and any other fields that will be different from the starting item.
Instead of looking for similar items to copy when setting up new items, you could set up dummy items that just serve as templates for creating new items. For example, you could go to Maintain Employees and set up an employee record with an ID of DEPT1-Hrly and set all of the GL accounts and pay types correctly for an hourly employee in department 1, and then set up another for DEPT2-Hrly. When you need to add a new employee, instead of having to set all of the GL accounts to the right department, you can just bring up the appropriate dummy employee record, enter the new ID, then fill in the name, address, and other information unique to that employee, and know that everything will be set up correctly.
