Client Notes

As with debtor accounts, the software provides a sub-file Note Tab on the client profiles which allows you to enter and store notes on any Client record. To access the Client's Notes you must have a Client screen open. Click the Tab labeled Notes to display what existing notes or add new notes.

Client Notes

Notes are stored with automated date/time/ Operator ID footprints in the same manner as Debtor Notes. Operator color settings will follow the same convention as per Operator Setup.

All the functionality of Debtor's Notes, including reports are available when you need to utilize and/or extract data from Client Notes.

For example, if you updated the D.B.A. field on the client from ABC Company to DEF Corporation, you'd generate a note line in the client note tab that read: "06/03/2015 12:30:28 OWN : Old Client-> D.B.A. ABC Company".

Importing Client Notes

Sample import maps are shipped with Collect! and are available for download from the Member Center.

Date/Time Stamp Format

The dates in the Debtor and Client note time stamps will appear formatted using the date options specified in Collect's Date Format settings. This screen is accessed through "System\Preferences\Options, Sounds and Colors". Click the Date Format button in the lower right corner of the Screens and Messages popup.

When notes are read from the database, the system will convert the original dates into the format preference you have specified in the Date Format screen. The shipping default is "Month Day Year" with a Date Separator of slash ("/"). When the notes are written into the database, ALL the time stamp dates are converted into YYYYMMDD format without any separators.

For longstanding users who have converted over time from versions below Version 11, there is one special case when reading old (pre-11) note dates, where Collect! cannot know what format a date is in. It is MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY format and both the month and day are less than 13. Collect! cannot know which one is the month and which one is the day. The current date settings cannot be relied on because the user may have changed them.

To solve this, a new file is created in the bin folder called "dateformat.dat". It contains a format string representing the current date settings at the time it is created and represents the format of the dates in the existing notes. If the file exists, it is left alone. The user is free to change their date format settings in the preferences after this file is created.

When Collect! reads the notes and encounters an unconverted date in XX/XX/YYYY format where both the month and day are less than 13, it will use the data in 'dateformat.dat' to determine which Fields represent the month and day. In all other cases, the month and day can be figured out easily.

When the notes are written back, all the dates are CONVERTED to the YYYYMMDD format.