A list shows you many things at once; a record shows you one. Open a quotation, a supplier, a work order or a meter reading and the page is laid out the same way and behaves the same way every time, so this page is worth reading once — the module chapters assume it rather than repeat it.
Creating a record
The black button at the right of a list’s top edge reads New. It never spells out what it is
about to create and never wears a +: the heading above the list and the entry in the sidebar
have both just said what you are looking at, and the button only has to carry the verb. The
command palette is the other way in — press Ctrl+K, type new, and
the documents you are allowed to create are listed by name.
A blank record opens with the form already open, so you can start typing straight away. The bar across the top reads Sales quotations › New — the bare word, because the name beside it has just said what is being created.
An asterisk marks what saving needs. A field whose label ends in * has to be answered before
the record can be saved; a field without one may be left empty. A field needed in one case only
carries the mark only then: an import programme’s currency once you have typed its maximum amount,
the product family of a configurable product. A list whose first choice is (none) may be left
empty, and a list that needs an answer does not offer that choice.
A document’s lines are there from the start, beside the form, and the first line you add saves the document (below). So is a tab that is a table of lines, such as a partner’s addresses. The other tabs and the road along the top appear once the record has been saved: there is nothing to hang them on until it exists.
The code or number the form suggests
A document opens with its number already filled in — the next one in its series, asked of the
server as the form opens, so a quotation offers QT-2026-000042 after QT-2026-000041.
A business partner opens on its code the same way — PAR-000042 after PAR-000041 — and so do
a product (its reference, PRD-…) and a warehouse (WH-…). A code has no year in it — a partner you add this year is still the same partner in five — and every partner
draws from the one run, client or supplier. An employee’s number is the one code that keeps the
year it was entered in, EMP-2026-000042, the shape it had before codes had a run of their own.
It is a suggestion, not a reservation. Nothing is set aside for you while you type. If a colleague starts a quotation at the same moment, they are shown the same number, and whichever of you saves second is the one who has to change it. That is the fact worth carrying away from this page, because it is the one that surprises people.
The field is yours from the start. Type your own number over the suggestion and it stays typed — an answer arriving from the server a moment later never writes over what you have put there. Where the series depends on a choice you make — a treasury entry is numbered as a receipt or as a payment, and the two count separately — changing that choice swaps the suggestion for the other series’, and still leaves a number you typed alone.
A code may also be left empty. Clear the field and save, and the record is given the next code as it is saved; once the field is empty it says so. A document’s number has to be filled in.
A code stays yours to change. On a saved partner, product, warehouse or employee, choose Edit and rename it — a business that brings its own scheme later renames its codes. A document’s number cannot be changed once it is saved, because every other document that names it names it by that number.
When the number is already taken
If you save a document whose number somebody already has, the answer appears under the number field: That number is already taken. Pick another, or take the suggested one. Nothing was created, you are still on the same form with everything else you filled in, and the number is the only thing to change. A code somebody already has is answered the same way, in its own word: That code is already taken. Pick another, or take the suggested one.
A required field you left empty is answered the same way — one sentence under the field, the page unmoved, nothing sent until every one of them has been answered.
What the form fills in for you
A new record opens on what your business already knows, so you only answer what it does not:
- The default of a list. A field that picks a warehouse, a price list or a calendar opens on the one marked as the default. Your first warehouse, price list and calendar are the default on their own, and marking another one moves the mark there. Where an empty choice means something — a low-stock alert that watches every warehouse at once — the field opens empty and says what empty means.
- The only choice. A field that must be filled and offers exactly one choice opens on it.
- Your currency, or your partner’s. A document opens in your organization’s own currency. Picking a client or a supplier who trades in another switches it to theirs, along with their payment terms.
- The day. A date usually entered on the day opens on today: a hire, a lot’s arrival, a transfer’s departure, a leave’s first day — its last day follows it — and a tax rate’s start. A first contract starts on the employee’s hire date.
- What your terms say. An invoice opens on its order’s or its client’s payment terms, and on the due date they give (Sales Invoices).
Everything the form fills in is drawn in its field, and you can change it. Once you have changed a field yourself, the form never fills it again, even when what it was filled from changes.
Typing a date, a time or a phone number
A date reads day, month and year, 22/09/2026, in every language and whatever your browser’s own
language is. Type the digits and the slashes arrive by themselves: 22092026 becomes 22/09/2026,
so a phone’s number keyboard is enough. A digit that can only be a whole day or a whole month on its
own is taken as one, so 4 becomes 04/. You can still type the slashes yourself, or a dot or a
hyphen, and 5.9.2026 becomes 05/09/2026. Backspace just after a slash removes the slash and the
digit before it, so each press takes one digit. A date pasted from a spreadsheet as 2026-09-22 is
read the same way.
A date you leave unfinished is completed from today when you move on: 22 becomes the 22nd of this
month, and 22/09 the 22nd of September this year. A two-digit year is read between 79 years back
and 20 years ahead, so 15/06/85 becomes 15/06/1985 and 01/01/30 becomes 01/01/2030. A day
the month does not have, such as 31 in a month of 30 days, is left as you typed it and refused
when you save.
The calendar button at the end of the field opens a calendar right under it, or above it when the window has no room below. The week starts on Saturday, and the month and the days are written in your language. Today is underlined and the day the field holds is highlighted. A day the field does not take is greyed out. Press the month at the top to choose another month, and press the year there to move through the years, though a far date, such as a date of birth, is quicker typed. Today, at the foot, picks today.
From the keyboard, ↑ and ↓ move the date by a day, starting from today in an empty field, and Alt+↓ opens the calendar. In the calendar the arrows move by a day or a week, Page Up and Page Down by a month and, with Shift, by a year, and Home and End go to the ends of the week. Enter picks the day, and Escape closes the calendar without changing anything.
In a table of lines, a date cell is the same field. Type a date straight onto it, or double-click it to open the calendar, and the line saves when you pick a day or press Enter.
A date and a time together, such as a transfer’s departure or the start of a labour entry, is typed
the same way: 130920261525 becomes 13/09/2026 15:25, the space and the colon arriving by
themselves. The calendar chooses the day and keeps the time you typed. A day typed without a time is
not given one: when you save, the field asks you to add the time, because hours worked and meter
readings are counted from it.
A phone number groups itself the same way, as Algerians write it: 0550123456 becomes
0550 12 34 56, a landline 021 23 45 67, and a number from abroad +213 550 12 34 56. A number
from another country is left as you type it, and nothing is refused, so an unusual number still goes
in.
Saving, and where you land
Save writes the record and takes you to its own page: the same page you would have reached by clicking it in the list, now with its tabs and its road. The blank form is not left behind you, so Back returns you to the list rather than to a form you have already filled in and sent.
Cancel on a blank record goes back to the list and creates nothing.
When Save stops, it says where. A message at the top says how many answers are missing or wrong, each one is said under its own field, and the page moves to the first of them, with the cursor in it — so on a long record you are taken to the field rather than left looking for it. An answer the form cannot show under a field, such as one on a row you cannot change, is said in that message instead. When the problem is one only the server could see, such as an invoice that no longer agrees with its order, its sentence also lands under the field it is about.
Adding lines before you save
A new quotation, order, receipt, transfer or bill of materials shows its lines beside the form straight away: an empty table, with Add above it. You do not have to save the document before you add to it. The empty table says what happens instead: No lines yet, and under it, that Add saves the record first.
Fill in what the form asks for, such as the client and the currency, and press Add. The document is saved as a draft and takes its number, and a message names it: Saved: QT-2026-000012. You stay where you were. The form is still open on what you typed, and a new line opens with the cursor in its first cell. That line, and every line after it, saves itself as you fill it in, as on any document. What a line fills in for itself, such as its description in the client’s own language, it fills in here too.
If the form still needs an answer, Add stops where Save would: the field says what is missing, the cursor goes to it, and no line opens until it is answered.
If you change your mind, Cancel asks whether to keep the document the first line saved. Delete removes it and takes you back to the list, and Keep it closes the form on it. It asks only during that visit, and only if you may delete the document: once you have pressed Save, or opened the page again, Cancel simply closes the form.
A document whose lines are written by another step shows them only once it has been saved. A work order’s material lines, for one, come from its bill of materials when it is released.
Reading a record
A record reads like a receipt. Its fields are one narrow column, each label paired with its value on a single line and a dotted line carrying your eye across, so you can run down it the way you read a till slip. Anything that comes in quantities — a quotation’s items, an order’s lines, a receipt’s goods — sits beside that column rather than behind a tab, so a total and the lines that make it up are on screen together. On a narrow screen the two stack, the record first.
The lines are a table like any other, with the same edge controls a list has — a search box, a filter, a column chooser and its own ⓘ explaining what each column holds. Add starts a new line, and each line saves itself as you fill it in: leave a cell and the row is written, so there is no second Save to remember. A line still missing something it cannot do without keeps being refused, with a message saying what, until the last cell lands. Tab and Enter move you along the row, and Enter on the last cell of the last line starts another one.
A cell that picks a record, such as a line’s product, ends its open list with the same helpers a form’s field has: the New … link, such as New product, which opens that record’s page in a new tab, and the ↻, which reloads the list. Because a line saves itself, the record you create there is not picked for you: come back, and it is in the list for you to pick.
At the end of the receipt, Created and updated shows when the record was first written and when it last changed. Records that carry more than one kind of thing put the rest behind tabs beside Overview — a partner’s addresses and contacts, a maintenance plan’s tasks. A record always opens on Overview, and the tab you move to is written into the page’s address, so a link you send a colleague opens where you were.
The road a document travels
Along the top, beside its tabs, a document shows the road it travels. The steps run left to right — Draft, Sent, Accepted — with the ones behind it ticked, the one it is on written in bold, and the rest waiting. When the next step is one you can take, it is written to be clicked. Rest on any step and it tells you when the document reached it and who moved it there; a step the rule moved by itself says when without a name.
Click the current step to open the whole picture: every state the document can reach, every move between them, and who made each move and when. This is also where the moves that leave the road are taken — rejecting, cancelling, revising. Documents that go around a step show it greyed and struck from their path, so you can see at a glance that it was skipped rather than missed.
A step the document cannot take yet stays where it is, greyed out, and says why. Rest on it and it tells you what to do first: an import dossier’s Closed waits for every order to have received its goods, and names the ones still waiting. Clicking it does nothing, so no dialog asks for a day the move would refuse.
Editing a record
A record’s page starts the way a list does. Across the top, beside its tabs, there is one main button, Edit, and a More actions button (three dots) holding everything else, just where a list’s top edge has New and its own More actions. Lines split the menu into the same groups on every page, always in the same order: the record’s next steps, the papers it prints, the pages it leads to, switching it on or off, and Delete last, so it is never the button next to the one you meant. While you are editing, the two buttons are Save and Cancel.
An action the record cannot take yet stays in its place, greyed out. Point at it, or reach it with the keyboard, and it says why and what to do first; on a touch screen the reason is written under it. A record that can no longer be edited shows Edit greyed out in the same way, saying where the change is made instead — or, on some pages, keeps only More actions. An action your role does not allow is not shown at all.
Delete asks first, and says plainly that it cannot be undone. Confirm and you land back on the list the record was on.
Printing is in More actions on every document that has a printed form, and it prints on the click, in the document’s own language. Printing and Sharing Documents is the whole of that.
Picking a record from another list
Many fields on a form hold a record that is kept somewhere else: the supplier on a purchase order, the warehouse the goods arrive in, the payment terms a client is given. Each of these fields opens a list to pick from, and each has the same three helpers.
- The ✕ inside the field empties it. It appears once something is picked. A field you may leave empty then reads (none). A field the form needs reads Select… again, and Save reminds you to fill it. From the keyboard, Delete on the field does the same.
- The ↻ inside the field reloads its list, for a record someone added while you had the form open. When a list could not be read, the field says so, and the ↻ is how you try again without losing what you have typed.
- The New … link under the field, such as New warehouse, is for the record that is not there yet. It opens that record’s own page in a new browser tab, ready to fill in, and leaves your form exactly as it was in the tab you came from.
The link appears only when your role lets you create that kind of record, and only for records that have a page of their own; a unit of measure or a currency has none. A storage location’s link appears once you have picked its warehouse, and opens the new location in that warehouse.
When the list is empty
A list with nothing to pick says why, in a line you cannot pick:
- Loading… while the list is still being read.
- Choose … first, on the closed field, when the list depends on another answer: a client’s addresses wait for the client, a payment’s account for its payment method.
- This list could not be read, with the ↻ to try again.
- You do not have permission to view this list, on the closed field, when your role does not let you see the records the list offers. There is no ↻, because trying again changes nothing. Whoever manages roles in your organization can add View on that kind of record to your role (Designing good roles).
- A reason of its own, where the field has one: No open account takes this on a cheque when the business keeps only cash, This client has no address on file on an invoice. Otherwise, Nothing to choose here.
A list can also show rows it greys out, each with the reason it cannot be picked, such as the orders an import dossier cannot take.
When you come back
Save the new record in its tab and come back: it is already picked in the field you started from, and anything that follows from the pick has followed, such as a client’s billing and shipping addresses on a sales order. The new tab says so, and you can close it.
- If you picked something else meanwhile, your choice is kept. The new record is in the list if you want it after all.
- If the field does not offer the new record, nothing is picked and the form says why. A partner saved without the Supplier role is not a choice in a supplier field, for example.
- If you close the new tab without saving, coming back still reloads the field’s list, so a record someone else added is there too.
When somebody else saved first
Two people can have the same record open, and sooner or later two people will. If a colleague saves while you are still editing, your Save does not go through and quietly undo their work — it stops and says so: Somebody else changed this record. The app refreshed it. Check your edits and save again.
Nothing you typed is lost. The page has quietly caught up to what is now stored, your own changes are still in the form where you left them, and pressing Save a second time writes them onto the record as it now stands. If the two of you changed different things, both survive; if you changed the same field, yours wins — but only because you chose to, having been told.
Leaving with unsaved changes
Start editing, change something and then leave the page — the sidebar, the bar across the top, the browser’s own Back — and Beelocity stops you first: Unsaved changes, You have unsaved changes. Are you sure you want to leave this page?, with Stay and Leave. Stay puts you back where you were with your edits intact; Leave goes on and drops them.
Moving between the record’s own tabs is not leaving, so it never asks.
A record that is not there
If you follow a link to a record that has since been deleted, the page says so: This record could not be found. It may have been deleted. It also gives you a way back to the list. A record your role does not let you open says that instead, in the same words the app uses anywhere you are refused a page.