I am working on a payment app that helps billers manage their owed payments and am trying to come up with the right design. I currently allow Billers to populate sheet 1 with a description of the bill via a Form (eg. Title, dates payments start, payment type, etc.). On sheet 2 I have information about the Payers associated with each bill (name, email, the amount owed). However, I am having trouble making this work because the process of registering a new bill and adding new Payers don’t seem compatible. My specific problem is to come up with a design that allows for:
Billers to enter info that includes bill description and multiple Payer info in one setting. I am trying to avoid just having one long-form where all the info (including all Payers) is entered on one form. Instead , I have a design where - once the description of the bill is entered there will be an “Add Payers” button that appears which billers can use multiple times to add multiple Payers.
I would like Billers to be able to easily add new Payers at a later point in time and for this to be automatically attached to the right bill. I am figuring I need a new sheet that accepts this info but I need this to be compatible with the info related to the original registering of the bill and the original Payers that were registered.
I would really appreciate anybody’s thoughts on this.
You would probably need a form button to create the bill, then submit it. Then you can view the bill and through a form button on the bill details, you can add each payer, one at a time, to a new sheet. Using the column values you can include the bill details along with the selected payer to the new sheet. It’s maybe not as quick and efficient as you want, but it would work.
Thanks, Jeff. When you say “Then you can view the bill and through a form button on the bill details” do you mean that the Biller would have to manually select the Bill title (to find the Bill they have just created from the multiple bills they might have created) to add Payers to before adding Payers? And to do this each time for each new Payer they add?
Yes, they would have to find the bill they just created. But once you are in the bill details, you can keep adding payers to that bill without leaving the bill details. The form button would be within the bill details.
Thanks, Jeff. I am not seeing how your below statement is possible without the biller having to manually select the Bill title again and again for each new Payer:
“But once you are in the bill details, you can keep adding payers to that bill without leaving the bill details. The form button would be within the bill details.”
Once the biller selects the right bill to add a Payer 1 to, they have to fill out the form with the Payer 1 details. At this point, the biller has two choices - either to submit this form to add Payer 1 to my sheet or to add another Payer (via the “Add Payer” form you suggested ). If they choose to submit, they will be taken back to the starting page (meaning they would have to select the bill name again before submitting info about Payer 2). If they click on “Add Payer” right from the details page, the info about Payer 1 (that they have just filled out) will not be submitted (and will be lost). Am I missing something in what you were trying to tell me?
The addition of column values you suggested:
“Using the column values you can include the bill details along with the selected payer to the new sheet”
I am not sure works because the column values are not visible to the biller (and therefore cannot be used by them to select the right bill). As such, it seems to me that the biller will have to manually select the bill title every time they add a Payer (which is obviously not ideal).
No, add a form button within the bill. The column values will be available to use in the form and they don’t have to select a bill from a dropdown or anything. All they should have to select is the payer and submit. I do something very similar in the Multi-Level Select in https://concepts.glideapp.io/. Each level has a form button which adds a record, but automatically pulls in the data from the page that the form button is on.
There is no reason for them to have to select a bill if they are already viewing that specific bill.
Thanks, @Jeff_Hager. This worked but I have a followup problem that I am hoping you can help me on.
As mentioned above, I want Billers to have the ability to add Payers to any bill. I would like Billers to be able to do this while viewing a specific bill in the app. I can follow your instructions above in order to add a Payer to a Bill and to utilize the Form/hidden Column Values to fill out part of the Form. As part of this process, I would like to allow Billers to select a First Bill Due Date from multiple monthly due dates in the future using the Choice component. In my spreadsheet, I have a formula that calculate these choices based on the Bill Title. However, I do not know what the selected Bill Title is until the Form is submitted (even though it is a hidden Column Value). How can I present the Biller his/her choices from within the Form once the Form is launched? Or is there another way to do this using Lookups/Relations? The problem I am having is that while I have the Bill Title as a hidden Column value, it is not actually entered into the Sheet until the form is submitted. But I need that value first before that so I can calculate the values and present as a choice to the Biller. Any thoughts on how I can get around this?
Well, I gave somewhat of an answer in your other thread:
If you can share any additional details about your app, such as screenshots or an actual link to the app that we can view, it would help to get a better understanding of what you are trying to do. I can only make a best guess in my own head based on what you’ve mentioned before, but what I’m visualizing may not be what your app looks like or how it works.