Introduction

Storing data is the core of any application. Tables are like buckets into which you store similar information: customers, vendors, punches, clocks, expenses, etc. Tables in-turn contain fields or columns which are the unique attributes of a given entry (row) in one of your tables (buckets): first name, last name, time, size, hours and whatever other things you want to store.

Table Types

There are two general types of tables: System and User. System tables are those reserved for internal uses, such as Users, Policies, Clocks and other internal apps which you cannot modify. User tables are those which you can create, or some other author has created and may be modifiable within the platform.

Transaction Tables

There are two styles of tables in the platform:

• Transactional - contain records or transactions which will be created into perpetuity (Punches, Schedules, Expenses and othere repeat transactions)
• Non-Transactional - contains data which is generally finite, such as Customers, Employees, Departments and other lists

Of course tables such as Customers and Employees are always growing, but they are not inheriently transactional in nature. Transactional records contain a date or date/time which is both specific and meaningful in the context of time.

For example, an employee Punch or Expense is recorded in the context of the current pay period, and will be transacted accordingly. Alternatively, while an Employee has a HireDate, and that date is meaningful in the context of the employee's time with you, new hire reporting and similar, Employees represent a finite resource which does not automatically recur over time.

The transactional nature of a table is something you'll decide when creating a table.

tip

The primary difference with a Transactional table is that one field must be declared as the "TransactionDate", thus setting it up for other tasks such as reporting, balance tracking and Ledgers. Data in transaction tables is also optimized for searching on the TransactionDate field.

Table Fields

The fields within the table are the individual attributes of each entry (row) in the table. Each field also has a Data Type which describes the formatting or type of data you'll store there. The following shows a sample table with the fields and the associated data type:

Field	Type	Example
Firstname	String	Mick
Lastname	String	Mouse
HireDate	Date	2023-11-07
PayGroup	Lookup	-> Hourly
Exempt	Boolean	0
Numbers	Child	[..] List of phone/email numbers

The next section will walk through the Table Designer and Add Table Wizard.