Removing information from receipts

We've had various questions about removing certain data from the standard receipt formats.  This example shows how to make an alternate form that excludes the first night and last night information (this could be used for owners or seasonal renters that don't actually check in and out).  A similar procedure can be used for removing most other information from receipts or forms.

What we need to do is import the sample "custom" version of the form we want to modify (the default ones in Forms Setup are simple add-ons to the canned formats so nothing can be removed from those).  Then we'll need to modify the form, removing the Elements for the data we want to take off of the receipt.

The process is generally the same for most forms, though the exact location of the elements we need to remove may be different.  This specific example will be for the "Full-page invoice" form.

1. Go to Maintenance / Advanced Customizations / Forms

2. Click the "Import form(s)" button.

3. The Import forms file dialog will open, and you need to navigate to the folder C:\Program Files\Campground Master\Samples.  In most cases it will already be in C:\Program Files\Campground Master and you will just need to double-click the Samples folder to open it.  If you don't see the Samples folder, you probably need to use the "Look In" drop-down list to navigate to the proper folder.

4. Locate the file "Sample Forms - Custom version of Full-page Invoice" (which may also have ".csv" at the end of it), click on it and then click Open.

5. Now at the bottom of the list you'll see "Custom Full-page Invoice".  Double-click on it to edit that form (or click on it and click "Edit Form definition").

At this point it doesn't look like much -- there's only one Element in the list.  But that's a "Region" element, which is actually a bunch of nested elements (this particular region just defines some outer borders for the rest of the form, so it's like a form within a form).  There are a couple ways you could proceed from here.  You could click "Expand Regions" so that all nested regions are broken out in a tree-like format, and then just find what you want.  But that could be too confusing, so in this example we'll take it one step (level) at a time.

6. Double-click on the Region element to edit that element.  Now a dialog will open showing the particulars of that region, including another list of elements (which are also mostly regions that further sub-divide the form into manageable and movable sections).

7. The dates we're looking for are in the upper right-hand area of the form (it's handy to have a printed version of the receipt to make it easier to follow along).  So double-click on the region that has the Notes "Receipt #, Site/Resv info, Balance".

8. This of course opens up another list of elements... double-click on the Region with the Notes "Reservation & Site info" to edit that region.

9. Now we're down to mostly Text and Data Expression elements, though the parts we're interested happen to be more Regions.  In this case the regions are just used to help format or position the information, so we don't need to drill down into those.  We just want to remove all of the information related to First Night, Last Night, Check In and Check out -- so select all 8 of the elements that mention those in the Notes, and click "Delete Elements", then confirm the deletion.

10. That's basically it -- you'll need to click "Save" 3 times to un-stack the Edit Element dialogs for each Region that we drilled into, taking you back to the Edit Form Definition dialog.

11. You can change the Form name if you prefer to make it more appropriate (e.g. "Full page invoice, no dates"), then Save it.

12. If you want this new form to appear higher in the list when printing receipts, then you can select this form in the Forms Setup dialog and use "Move Up" to move it where you want it to appear in the list.

That's it for defining the new form.  If you wanted to make this the new default for printing receipts, you could do so in Maintenance / Printing Options / Receipts.

Of course if you use several receipt formats then you would need to do this for each one you use.  You could also delete or disable the original forms if you don't need any with the dates on them.