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.
A blank record shows the record and nothing else. Its lines, its other tabs and the road along the bottom appear only once it has been saved, and for the same reason in each case: there is nothing to hang a line on until there is a document to hang it on.
The 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.
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.
When the number is already taken
Save a document whose number somebody already has and the answer appears under the number field, where the wrong value is: 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 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.
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 lines, 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.
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.
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. The tab you are on 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 bottom, 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.
Editing a record
A record’s page ends the way a list does. At the bottom, beside its tabs, there is one main button, Edit, and a More actions button (three dots) holding everything else — printing and downloading a document, the steps it goes through, and Delete last, after a separator, so it is never the button next to the one you meant. While you are editing, the two buttons are Save and Cancel; a record you can no longer edit keeps only More actions.
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 asks which language to print in before it acts. Printing and Sharing Documents is the whole of that.
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. It has been refreshed — 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
Follow a link to a record that has since been deleted and the page says so — This record could not be found — it may have been deleted — with a way back to its list, which is the only useful thing to offer. 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.