A list shows you many things at once, and a record shows you one. Open a quotation, a supplier, a work order or a meter reading. The page has the same layout and works the same way every time. So read this page once. The module chapters count on it and do not repeat it.
Creating a record
The filled button at the right of a list’s top edge reads New. It never says what it is about to
create, and it never has a +. The bar across the top and the entry in the sidebar have already
named what you are looking at. So the button only has to carry the verb.
The command palette is the other way in. Press Ctrl+K and type new. The palette lists by name the documents that you are allowed to create.
A blank record opens with the form already open, so you can start typing at once. The bar across the top reads Sales quotations › New. It uses the bare word because the name beside it has just said what you are creating.
An asterisk marks what saving needs. If a label ends in *, you must answer that field before
you can save the record. You can leave a field without an asterisk empty. A field that is needed in
one case only carries the mark only in that case. For example, an import programme’s currency
carries it after you type the maximum amount. A product’s family carries it when the product is
configurable. If a list’s first choice is (none), you can leave it empty. A list that needs an
answer does not offer that choice.
A document’s lines are there from the start, beside the form. The first line that you add saves the document (below). The same goes for a tab that is a table of lines, such as a partner’s addresses. The other tabs and the road along the top appear after you save the record, because until then they have nothing to attach to.
The code or number the form suggests
A document opens with its number already filled in. That number is the next one in its series, and
Beelocity looks it up as the form opens. So a quotation offers QT-2026-000042 after
QT-2026-000041.
A business partner opens on its code in the same way: PAR-000042 after PAR-000041. So do a
product (its reference, PRD-…), a warehouse (WH-…) and other records that have a code, such as a
treasury account. A code has no year in it, because a partner that you add this year is still the
same partner in five years. Every partner takes its code from the same run, whether it is a client or
a supplier. An employee’s number is the one code that keeps the year it was entered in:
EMP-2026-000042. It kept the shape it had before codes had a run of their own.
It is a suggestion, not a reservation. Beelocity sets nothing aside for you while you type. If a colleague starts a quotation at the same moment, they see the same number. Whoever saves second has to change it. This is the fact to remember from this page, because it surprises people.
The field is yours from the start. If you type your own number over the suggestion, it stays. An answer that arrives a moment later never writes over what you typed. On some forms, the series depends on a choice that you make. For example, on Receipts & Payments, money received and money paid out count separately. If you change that choice, the suggestion moves to the other series, but a number that you typed stays.
You can also leave a code empty. Clear the field and save, and Beelocity gives the record the next code as it saves. The empty field says so: Leave it blank to be given the next one. You must fill in a document’s number.
You can still change a code later. On a saved partner, product, warehouse or employee, choose Edit and rename the code. A business that brings its own scheme later renames its codes this way. You cannot empty a saved code. You cannot change a document’s number after you save it, because every other document that names it uses that number.
When the number is already taken
If you save a document with a number that somebody already has, the answer appears under the number field: That number is already taken. Pick another, or take the suggested one. Beelocity created nothing. You are still on the same form with everything else that you filled in, and the number is the only thing to change. A code that somebody already has gets the same answer, in its own word: That code is already taken. Pick another, or take the suggested one.
A required field that you left empty gets the same kind of answer: one sentence under the field. You stay on the form, and Beelocity sends nothing until you answer every such field.
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 know:
- 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 become the default by themselves. If you mark another one, the mark moves there. Where an empty choice means something, the field opens empty and says what empty means. A low-stock alert that watches every warehouse at once is an example.
- The only choice. A field that must be filled and offers exactly one choice opens on that choice.
- Your currency, or your partner’s. A document opens in your organization’s own currency. If you pick a client or a supplier who trades in another currency, the document switches to theirs. It takes their payment terms too.
- The day. A date that you usually enter on the day opens on today. That covers a hire, a lot’s arrival, a transfer’s departure, a leave’s first day and a tax rate’s start. A leave’s last day follows its first. A first contract starts on the employee’s hire date.
- What your terms say. An invoice opens on the payment terms of its order or its client, and on the due date that they give (Sales Invoices).
Everything that the form fills in appears in its field, and you can change it. After you change a field yourself, the form never fills it again, even if the value that it came 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
language is. Type the digits and the slashes appear 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. If you paste a date from a spreadsheet as
2026-09-22, Beelocity reads it the same way.
If you leave a date unfinished, Beelocity completes it from today when you move on. 22 becomes the
22nd of this month, and 22/09 becomes the 22nd of September this year. Beelocity reads a two-digit
year 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 that the month does not have, such as 31 in a month of 30 days, stays
as you typed it. Save then refuses it.
The calendar button at the end of the field opens a calendar right under it, or above it if the window has no room below. The week starts on Saturday, and the month and the days are in your language. Today is underlined, and the day in the field is highlighted. A day that the field does not take is greyed out. Press the month at the top to choose another month, and press again to move through the years. A far date, such as a date of birth, is quicker to type. Today, at the foot, picks today.
From the keyboard, ↑ and ↓ move the date by a day, and in an empty field they start from today. Alt+↓ opens the calendar. In the calendar, the arrows move by a day or a week. Page Up and Page Down move by a month, or by a year with Shift. 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. The line saves when you pick a day or press Enter.
A picker with ten choices or more, such as a line’s product or unit, opens on a search box. Type a few letters of the words you read, such as kilo for Kilogram, and the first match is highlighted, so Enter picks it. ↓ and ↑ move to the other matches. While you type, (none) leaves the list, so Enter never empties the field by mistake. To empty it, use the ✕ in the field. The choices are listed in the order of the words you read, in your language.
In a table of lines, you can type straight onto a picker cell. In a form, you can type as soon as you click a picker. Every key you type reaches the search, however fast you type.
You type a date and a time together in the same way, such as a transfer’s departure or the start of a
labour entry. 130920261525 becomes 13/09/2026 15:25, and the space and the colon appear by
themselves. The calendar picks the day and keeps the time that you typed. If you type a day with no
time, Beelocity does not add one. When you save, the field asks you to add the time, because hours
worked and meter readings are counted from it.
A time on its own has a clock button at the end of the field. Press the hour, then the minutes. The
clock offers minutes in steps of five. For any other time, type the digits: 0837 becomes 08:37.
A phone number groups itself in the same way, as Algerians write it. 0550123456 becomes
0550 12 34 56, a landline becomes 021 23 45 67, and a number with the country code becomes
+213 550 12 34 56. A number from another country stays as you type it. Beelocity refuses no phone
number, so an unusual number still goes in.
Saving, and where you land
Save writes the record and takes you to its own page. That is the page that you would reach from the list, now with its tabs and its road. The blank form is not left behind you. So your browser’s Back button returns you to the list, and not to a form that you already filled in and sent.
Cancel on a blank record goes back to the list and creates nothing.
A record that you start from another record’s tab returns there. For example, press New on a machine’s Work orders tab. The work order opens on that machine. Its trail at the top names the machine, and Cancel takes you back to the machine’s tab. A leave request started from a person’s Leave requests tab, and a credit note started from its invoice, return the same way. After you save, you land on the new record, as always.
When Save stops, it says where. A message at the top says how many answers are missing or wrong, and each field says what is wrong with it. The page then moves to the first of them and puts the cursor in it. So on a long record, you do not have to look for the field. Some answers cannot appear under a field, such as one on a row that you cannot change. The message at the top says those instead. Some problems only show when Beelocity checks the saved data, such as an invoice that no longer agrees with its order. Their sentence also appears under the field that they are about.
Adding lines before you save
A new quotation, order, receipt, transfer or bill of materials shows its lines beside the form at once: 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, Pressing Add saves this record first.
Fill in what the form asks for, such as the client and the currency, and press Add. Beelocity saves the document as a draft and gives it 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. Whatever a line fills in by itself, it fills in here too, such as its description in the client’s own language.
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 you answer it.
If you change your mind, Cancel asks whether to keep the document that the first line saved. Delete removes it and takes you back to the list. Keep it closes the form on the saved document. If you changed the document’s own fields since, Keep it saves them too, and the dialog says so. Cancel asks only during that visit, and only if you are allowed to delete the document. After you press Save, or open the page again, Cancel simply closes the form.
Some documents have lines that another step writes, and they show those lines only after you save. For example, a work order’s material lines come from its bill of materials when you release it.
Reading a record
A record reads like a receipt. Its fields are one narrow column. Each label is paired with its value on one line, and a dotted line carries your eye across. So you can run down it the way you read a till slip. Anything that comes in quantities sits beside that column and not behind a tab. Examples are a quotation’s items, an order’s lines and a receipt’s goods. So a total and the lines that make it up are on screen together. On a narrow screen the two stack, with the record first.
The lines are a table like any other, with the same edge controls as a list. It has a search box, a filter, a column chooser and its own ⓘ that explains each column. Add starts a new line, and each line saves itself as you fill it in. When you leave a cell, Beelocity writes the row, so there is no second Save to remember.
A column that a line cannot save without carries a red asterisk after its name, as a form’s field does. If a line still lacks one of those cells, Beelocity sends nothing. A message names every cell that is missing, and each of those cells is outlined in red until you fill it. A line that is not saved yet shows no status and no total, so you can tell it from the saved ones. What you typed on it stays there while you stay on the page.
A new line opens where it will stay. Some documents list their lines in the order that you wrote them, such as an order, a receipt or a bill. There, the new line opens below the last one, on the last page.
Pick the product first. When the product has only one unit, the line takes that unit. Some lines have a description, such as a quotation’s, an order’s, an invoice’s or a requisition’s. There, the description is the product’s name, in the partner’s language. You can type over either one. A line that you take from another document’s line opens on the quantity that this line still has. For example, a bill’s line opens on what arrived and is not billed yet. That is the figure that the line’s list shows.
Tab moves you along the row. Enter moves you down to the same cell on the next line. On the last cell of the last line, Enter starts another line. When you pick a record in a cell, the cursor stays on that cell, so Tab goes on to the next one. When you type in a cell’s list, the matches come first and (none) comes last.
A cell that picks a record, such as a line’s product, ends its open list with the same helpers as a form’s field. The New … link, such as New product, opens that record’s page in a new tab. The ↻ reloads the list. Because a line saves itself, Beelocity does not pick the record that you create there. 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. A record that holds more than one kind of thing puts the rest behind tabs beside Overview. Examples are a partner’s addresses and contacts, and a maintenance plan’s tasks. A tab that lists the documents made from this one, such as an order’s deliveries, has a New button while you can make one. It does what the matching button under More actions does. If the tabs do not fit, an arrow at each end of them shows the rest. A record always opens on Overview. The tab that you move to is written into the page’s address, so a link that 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, such as Draft, Sent and Accepted. The steps behind the document are ticked, the step it is on is in bold, and the rest are waiting. If you can take the next step, you can click it. A dialog then asks you to confirm, and says what the step sets in motion. Rest on any step, and it tells you when the document reached it and who moved it there. A step that a rule took by itself shows the date and no name. On a narrower screen, the road draws the steps behind the document as one: the last step it passed, ticked. Rest on it, and it lists each step the document passed. A step the document went around is then not drawn. If the road still needs room, it draws the steps after the next one as one too: the road’s last step, after a dotted line. The step the document is on and the next step always keep their words. On a phone, or if even that does not fit, the road folds into one button that names the current step. Click it, and you can take the same steps from there.
Click the current step to open the list of moves. At its top, it says which status the document is in, since when and who moved it there. Then it lists each status that the document can move to from where it is. A line under a status says what the move does. This is also where you take the moves that leave the road, such as rejecting, cancelling or revising. A status that Beelocity sets by itself is not in the list, and neither is a move that you may not make. A move that a button of the page makes is in the list, though, such as converting a quotation or approving an order. Picking it does what the button does, and the road offers it as the next step too.
A move that you cannot undo asks twice as clearly. If the status is final, such as Cancelled, the list says so under it. So it does for a move that you cannot undo on a status that is not final, such as receiving a customer return. The dialog that asks you to confirm then has a red button, and it ends with This cannot be undone.
If a document went around a step, that step is greyed and has no tick. Rest on it, and it says that the document went straight past it. So you can see at a glance that the document skipped the step and did not forget it.
A step that 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. For example, an import dossier’s Closed waits until no order in the dossier has goods left to receive. It names the orders still waiting. Clicking it does nothing, so no dialog asks for a day that 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) that holds everything else. They sit 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. First come the record’s next steps, then the papers it prints and the pages it leads to. After them come switching it on or off, and Delete last, so that Delete is never next to the button you meant to press. While you edit, the two buttons are Save and Cancel.
An action that 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, and says where to make the change instead. On some pages, such a record keeps only More actions. You do not see an action that your role does not allow.
Delete asks first, and says plainly that you cannot undo it. If you confirm, you land back on the list that the record was on.
Printing is in More actions on every document that has a printed form. It prints on the click, in the document’s own language. Printing and Sharing Documents covers all of that.
Picking a record from another list
Many fields on a form hold a record that is kept somewhere else. Examples are the supplier on a purchase order, the warehouse that the goods arrive in and a client’s payment terms. 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 after you pick something. A field that you can leave empty then reads (none). A field that the form needs reads Select… again, and Save reminds you to fill it. From the keyboard, Delete or Backspace on the field does the same.
- The ↻ inside the field reloads its list, for a record that someone added while you had the form open. If Beelocity could not read a list, the field says so, and the ↻ lets you try again without losing what you typed.
- The New … link under the field, such as New warehouse, is for a record that does not exist yet. It opens that record’s own page in a new browser tab, ready to fill in. Your form stays as it was in the tab that you came from.
The link appears only if 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 country has none. A list that Beelocity works out for one field has no link either, such as the open documents on a payment. A new record would not be one that the field offers. A storage location’s link appears after you pick its warehouse, and it opens the new location in that warehouse.
When the list is empty
A list with nothing to pick says why, in a line that you cannot pick:
- Loading… shows while Beelocity is still reading the list.
- Choose … first shows on the closed field when the list depends on another answer. A client’s addresses wait for the client, and a payment’s account waits for its payment method. If the field cannot name that answer, it says Answer the fields above first.
- This list could not be read. Refresh it to try again. comes with the ↻.
- You do not have permission to view this list. shows on the closed field when your role does not let you see the records that 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 shows where the field has one. A cheque says No account here can take this. when the business keeps only cash. An invoice says This client has no address on file. Otherwise, the line says Nothing to choose here.
A list can also show rows that it greys out, each with the reason that you cannot pick it. The orders that an import dossier cannot take are an example.
When you come back
Save the new record in its tab and come back. It is already picked in the field that you started from. Anything that follows from the pick has followed too, 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, Beelocity keeps your choice. The new record is in the list if you want it after all.
- If the field does not offer the new record, Beelocity picks nothing and the form says why. For example, a supplier field does not offer a partner saved without the Supplier role.
- If you close the new tab without saving, coming back still reloads the field’s list, so a record that 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. If you save now, your form replaces what they changed on it. To keep their change, press Cancel and then Edit.
Nothing you typed is lost. Beelocity has read the record again, and your form still holds everything as you left it. If you press Save a second time, Beelocity writes the whole form onto the record as it now stands. So a colleague’s change to a field outside this form stays. But a colleague’s change to a field on this form goes back to what your form holds, even if you did not touch that field. The form does not show you their change.
To keep what your colleague changed, press Cancel and then Edit. The form then opens on what is saved, and you can make your own change again. If you both changed the same field, the second Save wins, and you make that choice knowing what happened.
Leaving with unsaved changes
Start editing, change something and then leave the page by the sidebar, the bar across the top or the browser’s own Back button. Beelocity stops you first. Unsaved changes opens with You have unsaved changes. Are you sure you want to leave this page?, and offers 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, Back to the list. If your role does not let you open a record, the page says so instead: You do not have permission to view this page. Beelocity uses those words wherever it refuses you a page.