Advanced Find searches all your transactions at once: sales, purchases, banking, payments, general journal entries and inventory adjustments. Use it when you know something about a transaction but not where it lives, such as the amount on a cheque, a word in its memo, the customer's name or roughly when it happened. From each result you can open the transaction, or go straight to its Transaction History or Transaction Journal.
Advanced Find only reads. It never changes a transaction.
Opening it
Choose Edit ▸ Advanced Find…. It opens over the Home Page; Esc takes you back to the Home Page. It needs permission for the General Ledger or the Report Centre.
Two other searches live beside it on the Edit menu and do different jobs:
- Find in This Window (Ctrl+F) searches the list on the screen you are looking at. See Find in this window.
- Go To / Look Up… (Ctrl+K) jumps to a screen, customer, vendor or item by name. See Go To / Look Up.
Find a transaction, step by step
- Open Edit ▸ Advanced Find…. The results area reads Set what you are looking for and press Find.
- Under TRANSACTION TYPE (none ticked = all), click the types you want, or leave them all unticked to search every type.
- Fill in any of the other boxes: name, number, memo, amount, dates or paid status. Every box you fill in must match, so each one narrows the search.
- Click Find, or press Enter in any text box. The button reads Finding… while it searches.
- Read the results, newest first. Double-click a row to open the transaction.
- To start again, click Reset. It clears every box, unticks every type and empties the results.
The filters
Transaction type
Click a type to tick it; click it again to untick it. You can tick several. With none ticked, every type is searched.
| Type | What it finds |
|---|---|
| Invoice | Invoices. Estimates are not included. |
| Estimate | Estimates. |
| Sales Order | Sales orders. |
| Credit Memo | Credit memos and refunds to customers. |
| Payment | Payments received from customers and payments made to vendors. Credits applied to a document are not listed as payments. |
| Bill | Bills (not cheques or credit card charges). |
| Cheque | Cheques written with Write Cheques. |
| Credit Card Charge | Credit card charges. |
| Vendor Credit | Vendor credits, and credit card credits. |
| Purchase Order | Purchase orders. |
| Expense | Expenses. |
| General Journal | General journal entries. |
| Inventory Adjustment | Inventory quantity and value adjustments. |
The other boxes
| Field | What to enter / what it means |
|---|---|
| Name | Part of a customer's or vendor's name or company name. Matches anywhere in the name, so hydro finds BC Hydro. General journal entries have no name and are left out whenever this box is filled in. |
| Number / Ref. | Part of the document number or reference number. For a payment it matches the payment's reference or the cheque number; for a general journal entry, its entry number. 104 finds 104, 1042 and INV-1045. |
| Memo contains | A word or phrase in the transaction's memo or note. For a payment, the payment's note; for a journal entry, the entry's memo. |
| Amount (exact) | The total to the cent, for example 1250.00. Commas are ignored, so 1,250 works. A document is matched on its total, a payment on the payment amount, and a journal entry on its total debits. |
| Amount from / to | A range of totals. Fill in either or both: from alone means "at least", to alone means "at most". |
| From date / To date | Click the button to add the date. It starts on today; change it in the date box that appears. The × beside it (Any date) removes it again. Documents are matched on their date, payments on the date paid, and journal entries on the entry date. |
| Paid status | Any (the default), Open (not paid, or partly paid) or Paid (paid in full). This applies to documents only; payments and journal entries are not filtered by it, so tick the document types you want as well. |
The results
Results appear in a table, newest first. Click a column heading to sort by it.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Type | The kind of transaction, for example Invoice, Bill, Cheque, General Journal, Payment Received or Bill Payment. |
| Num | The document number, or the reference if it has no number. For a payment, its reference. |
| Date | The transaction date (for a payment, the date paid). |
| Name | The customer or vendor. Blank for general journal entries. |
| Memo | The memo or note. |
| Amount | The total, or the payment amount. |
| Buttons | Transaction History (clock icon) and Transaction Journal (book icon). See below. |
The footer counts the matches, for example 37 found, and reminds you to Double-click a row to open it. If nothing matches, the table reads Nothing matches.
Opening a result
- Double-click a row to open it. A document opens in its own form. A general journal entry opens on its own page. A payment opens the invoice or bill it was applied to.
- Transaction History (clock icon) opens the transaction's history in the same window: payments, credits, returns and its change log. It is greyed out on general journal rows.
- Transaction Journal (book icon) opens the debits and credits it posted, including its payments' entries.
Press Esc to step back from the history or journal. See Escape, Back and closing forms.
Large results
Advanced Find shows at most 500 matches. When a search reaches that many, the footer reads 500 found — showing the first 500; narrow the search. Add a date range, a type or a name and click Find again.
Permissions
Advanced Find is available to anyone whose role can see the General Ledger or the Report Centre. Anyone else gets You do not have permission to view this. Ask an administrator to grant it under Users & Roles. See Roles and permissions explained.
Tips
- To find a cheque when you only know the amount, tick Cheque and Payment (a cheque that paid a bill is a payment, shown as Bill Payment) and enter the amount in Amount (exact).
- To list everything a customer still owes on, enter their name, tick Invoice, and set Paid status to Open.
- To find a transaction from a bank statement line, enter the amount and a date range a few days either side of the statement date.
- When you do not know the exact amount, use Amount from and to a dollar or two apart.
- A search with no filters at all lists your most recent transactions of every type, up to 500.
Common problems
Nothing matches, but I know it is there. Every filled-in box must match. Clear boxes one at a time, starting with Memo contains and Amount (exact), and search again. Check the dates: a payment is matched on the date it was paid, not the invoice date.
My general journal entry does not appear. Journal entries are left out when Name is filled in, because they carry no customer or vendor at the document level. Clear Name, tick General Journal, and search by number, memo, amount or date.
Paid status is set to Open, but payments and journal entries still appear. Paid status only filters documents. Tick the document types you want, such as Invoice or Bill.
Double-clicking a payment opened an invoice. That is by design: a payment opens the document it was applied to. To see the payment's own entries, use the row's Transaction Journal button.
The footer says "showing the first 500". The search matched more than can be shown. Narrow it with dates, types or a name.