Default invoice notes

[tomas-goncalves]

Adds default note to all labor lines. Only on quotes

[tomas-goncalves]

Thanks for the comments Perry :)
This code feels way cleaner

[DaAwesomeP]

Oh, I just realized that this is not actually editing the notes line in the invoice--it's just modifying how it is displayed. I think it would be better to have this text appear as a placeholder when you select Labor as an invoice item. That way how it is appears in the quote is permanently recorded in the DB. Technically this will modify how previous quotes are displayed which is not good. I think it can be confusing if the text magically appears and disappears when going from quote to invoice (especially since Tracker sends invoice emails itself). Also then you can remove the text if you really mean for it to be blank.

[tomas-goncalves]

I think changing the historical quotes is less of an issue for me, considering they are saved in email and easily restorable. Also, setting a precedent that we want all of the quotes to be consistent would stop any changes to the quote format.

I haven't finance chaired, but I feel like the comments disappearing when it becomes an invoice would save time and not be an issue. Unless I read the code wrong, Tracker doesn't automatically change the status, and invoices still go through standard approval procedures.

Also, in the very unlikely case that you will not want a note to appear, there's an easy workaround that's just adding a space to the quote.

[DaAwesomeP]

I think changing the historical quotes is less of an issue for me, considering they are saved in email and easily restorable.

I mean, this is changing a very large historical precedent for Tracker of being careful not to modify past representations (particularly related to finances). This is why we are so careful with DB migrations. Also, email is not an archival solution (especially for financial records). Tech has had quite a few incidents related to email preservation and accessibility in particular.

Also, setting a precedent that we want all of the quotes to be consistent would stop any changes to the quote format.

The format has definitely changed (i.e. introducing the COVID disclaimer), but item name, quantity, text, and price are never adjusted retrospectively.

Also, in the very unlikely case that you will not want a note to appear, there's an easy workaround that's just adding a space to the quote.

This feels like a hack since whitespace should be trimmed anyway and is not intuitive. If someone inadvertently later adds whitespace trimming on user input in that field then it would break that edge case. Or if there are existing historical quotes where someone mistakenly left a space, now that will appear different than expected as well. On mobile devices, trailing spaces in fields are often filtered out by the browser since they are typically fragments from text completion.

It is in general considered confusing UI to have a specific edge case in user input trigger a specific output. In this case, the user is expected to implicitly know that because they selected "Labor" and the invoice is in "Quote" mode and the textbox is empty that it won't actually be empty.

It would be much more clear to either pre-fill the textbox with the intended text or to add a checkbox like "use default labor message" or something like that. You could also add a JS button to assist with the invoice step such as "clear all labor notes."