Simple Invoices - Forum

Well, it's my first post. After been testing a lot of invoice app since few weeks ago and I decide be with SimpleInvoice, it's really nice and could notice a promiser future for it.

Testing SI I found I require a couple of changes to get a customization as I need. The first I noted is there isn't a way to save my products by category, so I need Categories and Subcategories (Parents and Childs). As following:

Suppose you have a small business with products/services in printing and promotional gifts, you have: Trifolds, Posters, Books, Business Cards, Banners, Vinyls, Flyers, Caps, T-Shirts, Mouse Pad, Pens.

Okay, I would like create 'Categories' for all of these.

Print
- Folds
a. Bifold
b. Trifold
- Posters
- Staples
a. Books
b. Magazines
- Business Cards
- Flyers

Digital
- Banners
- Vinyls

Gifts
- Caps
- T-Shirts
- Mouse Pad
- Pens

I create the class 'categories' in /library/acl.php and upload the folder to /modules/categories (.php) and /templates/default/categories (.tpl) and /include/categories.php

I modified the menu in /templates/default/menu.tpl and now I have 2 new options under 'Products': Manage Categories, Add Category.

I created the si_categories table in MySQL with category_id, name, slug, reference, parent, enabled. The table has 3 registries.

My Category form has 3 fields.
Category: VARCHAR
Code: VARCHAR
Parent: DROP-DOWN LIST [Print, Digital, Gifts]
Enable: DROP-DOWN LIST [enable, disable]

I can see the form as well as I can see the Add Product, so it's working.

I added customized lines in /includes/sql_queries.php for function insertCategories but when I click on Save button I get save_product_failure message.

I would like be able to create this kind of Categories to put them in my Create Invoice as a drop-down list (2) with the purpose to once I could choose the Category of the products (parent) then the other drop-down list only show the next level childs on it.

The list of items to choose should be all items inside the parent Category.

For Example:

People: JOHN DEERE
Customer: CATERPILLAR
Date: 31-01-2011 (Date with format output DAY.ABBREVIATION-DD-MONTH.ABBREVATION-YYYY -> MON31JAN2011)
[Parent], [Child] (p.e. [Print] [Folds] with codes 51, 11 respectively]

QTY, ITEM (only the items inside Parent), Tax, Price

I'll use this for numbering the invoice as following: Customer-Date-REF[Parent code][Child code]-#Correlative-[Child slug].pdf

Target Numbering:

CATERPILLAR-MON31JAN2011-REF5111-0082-FOLDS.pdf

Nice challenge. That's all I need.