Student Billing State-of-Mind Time Saver: Enter Charges and Payments Fast!er

Jennifer Maroney — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:35:00 GMT

I wanted to share with you a little known, and extremely under utilized, feature in Student Billing that can save you hours of charge and payment data entry time. It's called Fast!. Using Fast! allows you to quickly enter a large number of charges or payments at one time using a customized datasheet, instead of opening each record individually. When you process the datasheet, Fast! automatically creates the group of new records.

The first thing you need to do is create the Fast! datasheet. Once the datasheet is created, it can be used over and over again to enter charges or payments. Follow these steps:

In Fast!, click New SB Charge or New SB Payment.
Enter a name and description.
In the Default set field, click the binoculars to select a saved or create a new default set (BB106328).
In the list of available fields, highlight the fields to include in the datasheet and click Select.
Notes:
- Fields appear in the datasheet columns in the order in which you select them. I recommend prioritizing the field order to speed data entry. For example, put rarely used fields near the end of the datasheet.
- If you add a field that causes other fields to become required, the program automatically adds the additional required fields.
Once all fields are selected, click:
- Save and Close to save the datasheet and return to the Fast! page.
- Save and New to save and close the datasheet and open a new one.
- Datasheet View to save the datasheet and begin entering charges or payments.

Once you create and save the Fast! datasheet, it's time to get to the data entry. Here's how:

In Fast!, open the datasheet, and click Datasheet View.
Notes:
- If you entered a default set, the values appear in the default row (D). If you did not assign a default set, click the binoculars to select a saved or create a new default set.
- Values selected to display in the default row will default based on the default auto-fill setting (BB351843).
Click Add Records By Query in the dark gray bar to automatically load a group of records into the datasheet, if appropriate.
Enter the appropriate data and press Tab to move through fields.
Click Save and then Commit Records to create the group of records.

For more information about Fast!, check out the Fast! Guide.

Enjoy your new found time . Talk to you soon!

The Book Bag : Fast!

Student Billing State-of-Mind Time Saver: Enter Charges and Payments Fast!er