Table of contents
Tracker Calculation
These use cases should specifically point out use cases where the existing mathematical calculation field stretches to it's limits and further development like for example calculation across items or across trackers would be needed.
Traders Job management App
(small or mid-sized trades business)
(existing real use case, coming to the limits of inability of calculation across tracker items)
A trader (craftsman/artisan) has customers in various places or cities and wants to
a. get an overview about the locations on an password secured online map (Cartograf) with quick access to customer and job details via the points of interest (POI) and
b. track data about time (productive and unproductive), driven distance, costs, notes (meeting notes, orders), etc.
The trader works alone or with a small team and has no time or talent for having bits of papers everywhere and handling a heavy load of office work in his limited spare time. The trader is mostly on the road or at the customers working. Getting the time to write invoices to get money for living and to pre-finance the next jobs or contract is an ongoing issue, so
c. the tracked data shall not only be used to visualize status reports and to get quick access to contact details or memos, but
the data shall be pre-processed, respectively calculated mathematically directly in the job-management app to be able to print out and save reports for the daily work per customer, invoices or prefilled invoice templates for the customers, travel expense reports for him and his employees or team mates, etc..
Ideally invoices could be printed and sent out even from the car in a brake time by using a mobile device like tablet or smart phone.
=> right now the app provides the data to write an invoice in a few minutes, although some manual calculation and search and find is necessary. Export to Excel/Calc gets less and less necessary, but for example the times or distances or certain daily relevant data must be collected and manually processed as reports are job based (= up to several per day, when more than one customer/job is involved at one day).
In case the data from daily reports - best filtered for certain periods - could be only summed up for the same field_name across several items (like {sum row "distance" for "customerXYZ" and/or "daterange123"}, {sum row "costs" for "job57" in "July2017"}, etc., I am sure at least certain types of invoices could be created by pressing one or few buttons in the smartphone ... given that all data is tracked reliably at every arrival and departure.
I can imagine a calculation tracker with a number of field of type "mathematical calculation of row of that (remote) tracker" with options for conditions like filter 'dater range' or 'customer name' or 'job ID' etc.. plus the existing field "mathematical calculation inside this item" to sum up and multiply invoice number and tax.
Imho there is no need to calculate across the items in the same tracker as the data is collected or created BUT a second tracker for the cross item calculation would enhance flexibility.
Example
Following Tracker numbers are not the tracker IDs, as the tool likely has a bunch of more trackers, respectively is build upon a CartoGraf installation.
tracker1
Provides the contact details of customers, partners, employees
This can be a simple address book tracker.
This is not the classic CartoGraf POI tracker, but a customer map or other would be still an idea or option ...
tracker 2
Provides the job/contract details and gets contact data, addresses etc. from tracker 1 by object-link, object-list and dynamic-objectlist.
This is a CartoGraf tracker where a number of fields are added. Every job is represented by a point of interest on the CartoGraf Map (kind of CartoJob).
This tracker must be different from tracker 1, as
a. the same customer can assign several jobs at different places and the idea is to see the job locations and their distances related to each other visually on a map.
b. customer data like name, address, contact data shall be filled in by the worker by using simple dropdown menus (object-link, object-list, etc.), whilst customer data is provided by the office.
tracker 3
Provides the job-based daily work-and-cost-reports (can be as well two or more trackers (work and travel, material, external contracted work, ...)
report ID | job ID | customer | date | raw data collected in several fields | calculated driving cost by cent/mile | calculated driving time | calculated work time |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
123 | 77 | John Doe | 2-July-2017 | ... | 75,00€ | 2hrs | 3hrs |
124 | 78 | Mary Smith | 2-July-2017 | ... | 37,00€ | 1.2hrs | 5hrs |
125 | 72 | Mark Penn | 2-July-2017 | ... | 20,00€ | 0.75hrs | 2hrs |
126 | 77 | John Doe | 3-July-2017 | ... | 75,00€ | 2hrs | 5.5hrs |
127 | 82 | Grace Jones | 3-July-2017 | ... | 25,00€ | 0.8hrs | 3hrs |
128 | 72 | Mark Penn | 3-July-2017 | ... | 60,00€ | 1.65hrs | 8hrs |
... |
tracker 4
Each item of tracker 4 calculates (mainly sums) rows of tracker 3 based on related filter fields of the same tracker 4. Imagine it similar as the wiki page field and the related wiki page name field, which is a simple text field.
We can use existing field types to use as filter for a new cross-item mathematical calculation field.
2 date fields for a date range. and object-link or dynamic object list fields for drop down filters for ex for customer names.
Driving time in tracker 3 is collected for statistic and costing - for invoice only sum work time (per job/contract/customer and date range) from tracker3, multiply with tax (VAT) and sum to the final invoices gross value.
Price for the journey (mileage cost) can alternatively be flat prices per day or per job/contract.
All calculations and references shall be predefined in the tracker setup (field definitions).
The user only inputs the jobId and the date range. The rest is based on object-link, object-list, dynamic-object-list, mathematical calculation / advanced rating syntax and a new to be coded mathematical field (I have no idea if the existing field could be used for in-item and cross-item-cross-tracker calculation at the same time).
invoice ID | job ID | customer | date 1 | date 2 | Sum travel / journey costs ref Tracker4 | sum work time ref tracker4 | calulate work invoice net value | sum net price this item | multiply tax (VAT) this item | sum invoice price |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
10 | 77 | John Doe | 1-June-2017 | 30-June2017 | 200,00 € | 25hrs | 750,00 € | 950,00 € | 180,50 € | 1.130,50 € |
11 | 77 | John Doe | 1-July-2017 | 31-July-2017 | 320,00 € | 35hrs | 1.050,00 € | 1.370,00 € | 260,30 € | 1.630,30 € |
12 | 78 | Mary Smith | 1-July-2017 | 31-July-2017 | 120,00 € | 30hrs | 900,00 € | 1.020,00 € | 193,80 € | 1.213,80 € |
13 | 72 | Mark Penn | 1-July-2017 | 31-July-2017 | 122,00 € | 40hrs | 1.200,00 € | 1.322,00 € | 251,18 € | 1.573,18 € |
14 | 82 | Grace Jones | 1-July-2017 | 31-July-2017 | 170,00 € | 10hrs | 300,00 € | 470,00 € | 89,30 € | 559,30 € |
15 | 85 | John Doe | 01.08.17 | 31.08.17 | 230,00 € | 20hrs | 600,00 € | 830,00 € | 157,70 € | 987,70 € |
... |
Imho the results of tracker 4 then can be displayed on a wiki page (using a second output-tpl page) and printed as invoice by using the new mPDF feature.
At some point options to add custom data to the invoice, like extra hours or extra material, must be optional (maybe a next step of development of calculation).
If I am not wrong, one single field type similar to the existing mathematical calculation, although some more complicated due to the necessary filter references, could provide the opportunity to get all relevant invoice data directly from the web-application by
a. reliably using tracker 3 on a daily basis
b. creating the invoices by creating items in tracker 4
c. view the item and print
Conference Registration
(non-profit organisation NPO)
A non profit organization organizes an annually international conference.
For their participants management and paper management they set up a Tiki using trackers and wiki pages.
- Interested lecturers register to the website (if not yet) and submit papers to the call for papers, getting accepted (or not), etc.. Easy.
- Lecturers will get half price or free entry depending on the type of lecture
- Interested participants register and get prebooking assets. Next tranche gets early bird deductions.
- The conference has different parts with certain assets and prices
- for ex. pre-conference institutes recognized as further education training with scientific points
- plenary sessions and workshops (conference as a whole) has points as well
- events like conference dinner or river cruise might cost extra fees
Participants can book parts of the conference the whole package and have to decide which workshops they attend.
The attendants pay different prices depending on their role and the time of booking.
On the other hand there are a number of costs like
- conference venue
- interpreters
- technical equipment
- event agency (optionally)
- travel expenses for staff and lecturers
- accommodation for staff and lecturers
- etc.
Whether the included shop and payment features meet all requirements or not, regular reports of costs and revenues (compared to expected costs and revenues) have to be provided to the conference organizers.
Thus calculations inside and across tracker items and trackers would be required or at least massively helpful.
Spreadsheet Calculation