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.

Creating Trees

To create a tree, enter a Tree name, up to 30 characters. Click the <root> branch, and right click 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, and the tree branch name should not be the same as the tree's name. The branch short code is primarily used for (and is mandatory in these cases):

Transaction trees, and
Inventory 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 if more than one is selected.

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

Working with Branches

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

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

Adding Companies

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 displays for selection in these maintenance forms, enabling you to assign the masterfiles customers, employees, organisations, and the like to the branches of this tree for grouping and categorising.

Trees 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 is applicable to multiple types.

If you have defined a tree 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.

If the tree is assigned to the:

IN Serial/Lots zone, trees can also be assigned to serial/lots when you enter a transaction, as serial/lot numbers can also be created. Learn about this scenario:
Transactions zone, it is available to use for transaction analysis in the General Ledger 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.

Note: 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 they are, click 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

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

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

name1, scode1, name2, scode2

name1, scode1, name3, scode3

name1, scode1, name4, scode4

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

name1, name2