Tree Maintenance

Trees help you categorise and group masterfiles, which makes analysing and reporting on them easier. You can use trees to:

Group general ledger accounts by balance form type (fixed asset, current asset, liability, and the like)
Group customers by geographical location
Group inventory items by source;
Group transactions.

Access the Tree Maintenance form using the System > Trees menu.

To create a tree, enter a Tree name, up to 30 characters long. Click the <root> branch, and right-click with the mouse to display the options menu.

Begin defining your tree structure by selecting Add a tree branch. The branch name can be up to 30 characters long, and the tree branch name should not be the same as the Tree name. The branch short code is primarily used for (and is mandatory in these cases):

Transaction trees, and
IN Serial/lot trees.

Short codes are used as a quick way for the user to enter branch assignments, and as a means of displaying branches where more than one is selected.

Click OK to save the branch, or Cancel to exit without saving.

When you have created the first branch, two additional menu options appear when you right-click the mouse on the tree branch.

To keep adding branches to the tree, select Add a tree branch. You must be positioned on the branch where you want to create the branch under.

You can remove a branch by clicking on the branch you want to remove, and selecting Remove this tree branch from the right-click menu. You must remove all lower level branches before you can remove a higher level branch.

You can rename a branch by clicking on the branch you want to rename, and selecting Rename this tree branch from the right-click menu.

When you have defined your tree structure, you must select the company that it is applicable to, and the Zones that the tree is used in.

The Area tree is used for AR Customers, JC Employees, CRM Organisations, Contacts, and Service Requests. The tree will appear for selection in these maintenance forms, enabling the relevant masterfiles customers, employees, organisations, and the like) to be assigned to the branches of this tree for grouping and categorising.

Trees will belong to more than one zone if both the name of the tree and the tree structure applies to more than one module, and more than one masterfile type. For example, the Area tree can have branches to represent the different cities in Australia and New Zealand. This tree applies to more than one masterfile type by its nature because Area can be applicable to multiple types.

If you have defined a tree that you want to use in more than one company, you can select another company, and applicable zones, and save the details. Zones are defined at the company level.

Notes:

If the tree is assigned to the IN Serial/Lots zone, trees can also be assigned to serial/lots during transaction entry, as serial/lot numbers can also be created new. Learn about this scenario:
If the tree is assigned to the Transactions zone, it is available to use for transaction analysis within the GL and Inventory modules.

You can rename a tree by clicking the Rename Tree button when the tree is selected. To save your tree definition, press F2 or click the Save icon.

If the CRM Workflow module is in use, the option to Load from File is available at the top of the Tree Maintenance form. This option can be used to upload a tree from a .csv file.

The file must be in a specific format, depending on whether short codes are being used (if so, indicate this by clicking the Short Codes in file option before loading the file).

If short codes are being used, the format of the CSV file must be as:

name1, scode1, name2, scode2

(where name1 is the name of the first tree branch).

If you want to add multiple levels to a tree branch, repeat the section of the tree branch you want to add a new branch to. For example:

name1, scode1, name2, scode2

name1, scode1, name3, scode3

name1, scode1, name4, scode4

You can add as many sections/tree branches as you like using this format.

If you are not using short codes, the format of the .csv file must be as:

name1, name2