Customization Overview

Overview 

The goal of this knowledge article is to give you an overview of some of the most common ways that Accounting Seed can be customized.  

Customizing Navigation

Apps

An application is a group of tabs that you would like to appear in the same menu bar. When you install Accounting Seed an accounting application is automatically created for you, but you can create your own as well. You can create as many applications as you would like for different job roles throughout the company. 

List Views

A list view is a report of data that meets specific selection criteria. For example: "All Vendor Invoices that are unapproved" or "All Open Sales Orders." List views have completely flexible selection criteria and any data fields on the related object can be displayed on the list in any order you prefer.

With any list view, you can control the data selected via operators. An operator is a selection parameter such as: starts with, includes, is greater than, equals etc. You can set as many operators on the list view as you need in order to select just the data you would like to see.

A list view can also be configured for data that you own, as well as all data owned by others. List views can also be private or shared with others.

List views are commonly created for data records that need to be processed. It is common for data to disappear from the list as it is processed. For example, you may have a Billing list view where the email status equals "unsent." As you process the Billings and email them out, the email status will update to "sent." As a result, the Billing records you process will disappear from the list after you email them indicating that you do not need to work on them anymore. 

A list view can have selection boxes with actionable buttons at the top of the list view. For example, on the Billings list view, you can select Billings to send in batch. You can also select and update fields in mass on a list view for several data fields like pick-lists, checkboxes, and text. List views support up to 200 record selections at one time.  

Customizing Communications and Forms

Standard PDFs 

Accounting Seed includes standard PDF templates for email or print for the following forms:

• Billing Product Format
• Billing Services Format
• Customer outstanding statement
• Customer activity statement
• Packing Slip
• Purchase Order

All of the standard PDF forms can be customized without any code for the following:

• Adding your company logo
• Set your company address
• Setting which data field to sort lines on
• Setting a default Email Template
• Setting a reply to an email address
• Setting the currency format
• Setting the numeric format
• Create a custom footer to display standard information like remittance instructions

There is no limit on the number of PDF templates. You can create as many as you desire. 

Customizing PDFs

The Accounting Seed standard PDFs support light customization. The following activities can be done very easily:

• Add/remove standard or custom fields to the header
• Add/remove standard or custom fields to the lines
• Change a field label

To make any of the changes above, you will need to be able to edit a basic HTML page. The Salesforce version of HTML is called Visualforce. You can make a copy of the Visualforce page that you would like to edit and create a new PDF template. 

Salesforce based PDF generator

If you need more than light customization, Accounting Seed will work with any Salesforce based PDF generation tool such as Conga Composer or Drawloop. These tools allow for a complete branded look and feel and require no code. 

Custom Email Templates

All PDFs templates support custom email templates to specifically deliver your message. Any data fields can be included as variables in the template like customer name, contact information, and Billing number so you only need to create a few email templates for al your customers and supplier communications.  

Customizing Pages

Data Record Pages

A Data Record Page is how data for a specific record is displayed to the user. Accounting Seed offers many types of page layouts with multiple columns and sections. All pages can be customized, or you can create your own record pages from scratch. To edit a page, navigate to the record page you wish to edit and click on the gear icon. You'll then just select "edit" to edit the page. Here you can re-arrange the page by dropping and dragging the components wherever you like. Any data field, button, or related list of data can be added, removed or re-ordered on the page. 

Field Sets

A field set is a specific type of page edit used for Accounting Seed grid entry. Field sets allow you to add or remove custom or standard fields from the grid entry. The following entry grids in Accounting Seed support field sets:

• Journal Entry Lines
• Sales Order Lines
• Billing Lines
• Purchase Order Lines
• Payable Lines
• Expense Report Lines
• Time Entry Lines  

Adding Custom Buttons 

Custom buttons can be added to a data record page for processing a single record or for a list view processing a batch of records with your own custom code. Both a process builder and/or custom script can run from a button. 

Record Types

Record Types allow for the presentation of a data record to be different based on a processing stage of the record. Record types are useful when you would like to expose or restrict buttons or access to data fields based on the record's processing stage. Record Types are commonly used to separate the actions of creation, emailing and posting the following data records:

• Sales Orders
• Billings
• Purchase Orders
• Payables
• Journal Entries

For example, let's walk through how processing a Payable (vendor invoice) could work with the use of record types. With record types enabled, I could have an entry screen (page layout) for the Payable that did not have the posting button available to the user while the record has a status of "In Process." As a result this person could enter records but never post them while the record has an "In Process" status.

I could create a second record type for when the record has a status of "Approved," which would have the posting button available. This would allow the same user to post the record once it is approved. In summary, Record Types are useful for restricting or providing access to buttons and data based on the stage of processing.  

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Customizing the Database

Custom Fields

Custom fields can be created on any Accounting Seed data record to track the additional data required to operate your back office. The following custom fields are all supported and require just a few clicks to setup:

• Auto Number (System generated sequential number according to your format)
• Formula (Read only that derives a value from your custom expression)
• Roll Up Summary (Displays a sum, minimum of maximum of records in a related list)
• Lookup Relationship (Traditional Database relationship to another data table)
• External Relationship (Tracks a relationship to data stored outside of the platform)
• Checkbox
• Currency
• Date
• Date/Time
• Email
• Geolocation (Location via longitude and latitude)
• Number
• Percent
• Phone
• Picklist
• Picklist (Multi-Select)
• Text 
• Text Area (Up to 255 characters on separate lines)
• Text Area Long (Up to 131,072 characters on separate lines)
• Text Area Rich (Up to 131,072 characters on separate lines with images and links)
• Text (Encrypted)
• Time
• URL

Custom Objects (Data Tables)

Custom objects (data tables) are available to setup when you need to track additional non-accounting or supplementary accounting data. Custom objects are easy to set up with your own data fields as well. Creating a custom object requires just a few clicks.

Validation Rules

Validation rules allow you to block data entry into a data field based on certain conditions. They are used to keep your data clean and accurate. For example, you could set up a data validation rule that requires a department to be entered on the journal entry line if the GL account was an expense account, but does not require a department if the GL account on the line was a balance sheet account. Validation rules are useful for requiring data under certain conditions, as well as for ensuring that the data entered is correct. 

Customizing Language

Every tab, button, field name, or object name can be overridden with your own custom labels. Therefore, if you would like to better label the application to meet your company language, you can. Just remember that the support team, help, training, and release notes will still use the standard names, so this could lead to your users' confusion if they are not aware of the translated name. We recommend developing internal documentation to map out how the standard language corresponds to your custom terms, for reference when working with Accounting Seed support. 

Reports

Dashboards

Dashboards can be custom built to track your company's back office key performance indicators. Dashboards come with a large variety of graphics and can be positioned in any order you like. A dashboard cell is created from a management report, which will be discussed in the next slide. A management report can be created on any data table on the platform.

Management Reports

Management reports are typically used to report on transactional data. They have an easy drop and drag interface and can summarize data at multiple levels. Management reports can include charts and graphics and are interactive to the user when hovering and clicking into sub-groupings of the data.

Standard Financial Reports

Financial Reports are used for traditional accounting analysis of your data. Standard financial reports are already setup for you and require no setup. Standard Financial reports support drill down to transactional data and the reports can be filtered by ledger and accounting variables. The following reports are included as standard financial reports:

• Profit and Loss
• Profit and Loss Versus Budget
• Balance Sheet
• Trial Balance
• Cash Flow
• Ledger Inquiry

Custom Financial Reports

Custom Financial reports can be used to create your own analysis of your financial data. Custom reports support your own rows columns and GL groups. They also support custom calculations of data. Custom Financial Reports are often used for:

• Reporting multiple entity consolidated results
• Custom profit and loss analysis
• Department budgeting

Automation

Every click in Accounting Seed can be removed with automation. Workflow rules, Approvals, and the Process Builder all do not require any code to configure. The API for Accounting Seed is available for any automation requirements beyond the scope of the configurable tools. A summary of each tool is below:

Workflow Rules

Workflow rules can be used to automatically update data fields and send messages, tasks and alerts on a new data record you are directly creating or updating.

For example if you wanted to send an alert to a group of users when inventory stock is below the safety stock level and set a pick list field on the inventory balance to something like "Low Stock Level", you can use  a workflow rule to do this. 

Process Builder

The process builder can be used to automatically update data fields and send messages, tasks, and alerts on a data record related to the record you are directly creating or updating.

For example, if you wanted to edit a Billing record and have a result that updated the related customer automatically, you could use the process builder to do this. 

Approvals

Approvals can be used to approve any data records in the application at the stages you define. Approvals can also be combined with workflow rules to send messages and alerts to users when records need to be approved, or notify them once approved. The approval process will also show an audit trail of who approved the record and when. 

API

API stands for Application Programming Interface. Our API is very robust in that it will allow you to automate any single event or multiple events via code. Automations can be built to support a single data record chain of events or for a batch of records. 

Access

Accounting Seed has a robust set of tools to manage security and access to your data. The following is an overview of the most frequently used tools: 

Profiles

Profiles are groups of users who have the same basic foundation of rights and privileges. Profiles are used to restrict users to a common set of data access and update rights.  

Permission Sets

Permission sets allow you to add specific rights and privileges to a user or group of users in addition to a profile. Permission sets are additive so you can assign multiple permission sets to a user and they will inherit the combined rights of all the permission sets granted.  

Sharing Rules

Sharing rules allow you to make a data record private to an individual user or group of users or public to all users, or make the data record public to all users. Sharing rules can be used with queues and roles and hierarchies to restrict data access. 

Queues

Queues are a tool to group users together for alerts and access and are used with sharing rules. For example you could assign access to a Billing record to a single individual or a queue. With a queue all members of the group will have access to the Billing.

Roles and Hierarchies

Roles and hierarchies can be enabled and are used to segregate data based on the divisions of your organization. For example, if you would not like region A to see region B's data, you can use roles and hierarchies in combination with data sharing rules to achieve this.  

Communities

Communities are often called "portals" on other platforms. Communities allow you to show data to individuals outside of your organization for self-service. Customer and vendor communities are commonly implemented with Accounting Seed. All data in the application can be made available in communities. 

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