				Adabill 0.0.7 - Manual

1. Introduction

This is something a short "Adabill-HOWTO", because sophisticated
online-help is missing. I think I should fix this one day, but you
probably want to work with Adabill right *now*, so use this as
a brief overview.


2. Who should use Adabill?

Adabill is a software which helps me to write bills to my clients.
It is combined with a PostgreSQL-Database to store all the information
required by a company - bills, clients' address and so on.

Adabill is adapted to my needs, i.e. it calls mutt for email and tin
for news. If you dislike this, change the commands. That's why Adabill
is not the "make all install happy_use_it"-Software. You should be
able to run the PostgreSQL-database, change the LaTeX-installation
and make small changes to the source-code. So to say, you should be
an admin.

I guess Adabill works fine for small companies, but it should scale
to larger demands, too. At the moment, Adabill is not a groupware,
but I plan to put stress on that feature.


3. General using

This chapter describes how to solve the daily jobs.

3.1 How to add a client?

When Adabill is started you can see the outer container displayed "Kunde"
which is the German word for "client". The inner notepad is set to
"Neu" which means "New" (client).

Insert all the data belonging to your new client and press "Kunde eintragen",
which is the equivalent for "Insert client". 
The statusbar should tell you the internal number for your new client.

That's all.

3.2. How to create a bill?

Set the outer container to "Rechnung" which means "bill". The inner
notepad should show up with "Neu" (new). 

You may now provide one of the three possible entries. It is a good idea
to use the client-number. If you don't have it in mind, insert the
firstname and/or the name of the client. Then press the button "Rechnung
anlegen" (Create new bill).

The inner container should now display the next page.
You should never need to change "Rechnungsnummer" (bill-#).

Make useful insertions to Menge (count, how many), Artikelbezeichnung (name
of the good) and Einzelpreis (costs for a single good).
Here is an example:

	Rechnungsnummer: 5 (automatically given)
	Menge: 10
	Artikelbezeichnung: Athlon 1000 MHz
	Einzelpreis: 599.23

which means: for bill five, insert a position with ten AMD-Athlon-CPUs
at a cost of 599.23 $CURRENCY for each processor.

Press "Hinzufgen" which means "add". Go on and add some other products
to this bill #5 by changing Menge, Artikelbezeichnung, Einzelpreis
and pressing Hinzufgen/Add.

Press "Fertig" (Ready/Finish) to get an overview of the bill.
You may see the Details-Window for extra information. Details are
changed by "Setzen" (Set).

If Really-Print/Always is enabled a push to "Drucken" (print) generates
the LaTeX-file, runs "latex <filename>" and afterwards "dvips <filename>".
The result is a sheet of paper with your bill. :)


3.3. How to search for a bill?

Make sure the outer container is set to "Rechnung" (bill). Set the
inner notepad to "Suchen" (search).

You can either press the button to get *all* bills or you can limit the
search by providing Firstname and/or Name and/or client-#. Click on
the row and your (old) bill is called into the Overview-Window.

Hint: pressing the row-head changes the sort-mode of the column like
it is done in GUI-filemanagers.

You may add new positions to this old bill by entering the bill-#
into the usual dialogs.

3.4. How can I send an Email to the client?

You may either go to Kunde (client) / Suchen (search), enter a search-string
and then press the Email-Button in the left corner, or you can go
to Irgendwas (Something) / System and call your MUA with the button.

3.5. How to interact with Adabill?

There are two ways to use Adabill: on the one hand, you can start
on the left side of the inner container. Adabill will lead you through
everything.

Or you can select the inner notepad-pages by hand. If there is a line
for Rechnungsnummer (bill-#), then you can enter your desired number
and do the action without all the other dialogs. This is useful if
you want to view bill-#5 (you know it), but you don't want to call
the search-bills-window first. Go to Rechnung/bersicht, insert '5'
in the first row and press Anzeigen (show).


END
Adabill-manual	2001/05/05 by Adrian Knoth <adi@thur.de>
