Letter Layout Formatting

Accountants Enterprise only

Information from the database may be extracted for inclusion in letter layouts. For example, you may wish to include the addresses and names for a letter you are sending to your client base. Fields may be keyed into letters for the purpose of extracting information from the database. These are called embedded fields and use the format of "D1XX" where XX is the appropriate database field definition, for example:

Full name #D196

Initials #D168

Given names #D191

These fields must be specifically formatted within the letter layout for the system to recognise them and retrieve the required data.

There are also 30 accumulators (variable definition fields; #01 to #30) available which may be defined by the user to extract variable data. For example, if a client has both a postal and delivery address attached, the data is actually stored in the database in the same record type (in this case D3) so the particular address to extract has to be defined.

These accumulators are available for editing in the Utilities menu, Letter Writing Definition option. As a default, accumulators #01 to #06 are set to extract six lines of the POSTAL address. These are formatted as:

#01 - C\- Token

#02 - C\- Addressee

#03 - Postal Address Line One

#04 - Postal Address Line Two

#05 - Postal Address Line Three

#06 - Postal Address Line Four

This means that in layouts where the above accumulators are included, the postal address for the contact will be printed. In the above example, if the name has a C\- Addressee, you may nominate to actually print the token C\- in the letter, and/or the name of the Addressee. This is useful where a client is having her/his mail redirected.

Alternatively, you may nominate to exclude the C\- token in the layout and include the address only. This would be useful if for example you were doing a bulk mail out to clients and were addressing the letter to The Purchasing Manager. You would then add The Purchasing Manager as the Addressee in the address you were using for the layout.

The accumulators are saved to the master file when you add to them from the Letter Writing Definitions option in the Utilities menu. As you print letters and labels, there is a Variables button at the base of the letter and label printing windows respectively. Accessing this button enables you to make temporary changes to your letter writing accumulators without affecting the master file.