You've made a few records in Intacct: a customer, a contact, an invoice, or maybe a vendor and a bill. In either case, you did it, and you feel good about that. But now, it's a day or two later, and you need to update one of those records. Or maybe you're just getting used to Intacct and have to find a record someone entered in the past. Where is it? How do you find it? How are you supposed to know where to look?

Thankfully, finding information is easier than it seems. First, you'll want to read or at least scan over Move between applications to understand how Intacct is organized and where records end up. After you have some idea of how lists and records are related, ask yourself two questions when you're looking for a record in Intacct:

• What am I looking for? Is it a bill, journal entry, vendor, contact, customer, sales invoice? In other words, what type of record are you looking for?
• What do I know about the record? What details do you know that will help you find it? Do you know part of the vendor name? Do you know when the bill was posted and the amount? Think of this as an identifying detail that you can use later.

The first question will help you find the list of the record you're looking for. Lists, after all, are where all records are held. Whenever you're looking for a specific record, always go to its list to find it.

The second question will help you sort and filter through that list to find the specific record you want. As long as you know at least one identifying detail about the record, like the ID, name, date, amount, etc., you can probably find the record you're looking for.

Find the list

Lists, again, hold all records that are created in Intacct. All bills end up in the Bills list; all vendors in the Vendors list. Whenever you're looking for a record, you first need to know what you're looking for so you can find the appropriate list.

Example: Imagine that you created a bill two days ago, and just found out that the vendor address and contact information related to that bill needs to be updated. But now you can't find the vendor or the bill. You remember that the vendor name had "Goods" at the end, but that's about it.

So what are you looking for? In the example the above, you want to update the contact information of a vendor, so you're looking for a vendor, not a bill, which means you'd go to the Vendors list (Accounts Payable > All > Vendors).

Filter and sort by a detail

Now you've made it to the Vendors list, but there are so many to sift through. Now what?

Ask yourself "What do I know about this vendor?". You don't know the ID or ZIP or post code but you do know that the vendor name ended in "Goods." You can use this one, identifying detail to your advantage. But how?

Sort by column

You can sort a list by any column, simply by selecting the column header.

For example, selecting vendor name sorts the list alphabetically by name.

But wait, it ends with Goods; it doesn't start with it. So this option won't work this time. It might have worked if the vendor started with "Goods" instead, or if you were looking a bill by date instead.

Search for the record

You can search for a record by entering a value in the search box at the top of the list column. The simplest type of search is to search based on what the value starts with.

You could enter Goods into the vendor name column, then press Enter to run a filter search for the vendor.

However, your list just brings up all the vendors that start with "Goods," which still isn't what you want. This would have worked if vendor started with "Goods" instead, much like the last option.

Use a wildcard in your search

You can also combine a wildcard character (%) with your search term, which looks for your term anywhere in the column value.

In this case, you'd enter %Goods into the vendor name column, then press Enter.

Oh look! There it is! "Lisa's Supplies and Goods," just the vendor you were looking for.

Filter by multiple details

In addition to these sort and search options, Intacct also boasts a number of filtering options, which are available in the Advanced filters section of any list. When you filter a list, it will only show records that match the filters you've entered. You might use one filter or many, depending on what you need to find.

For instance, you might filter the Bills list by date and amount to find a specific bill.

Learn more about sorting and filtering in Intacct.

Bonus tips

If you're looking to get more out of Intacct, there's a couple of other ways you can make finding records even easier than the two questions above:

• Bookmark records
• Use and create views

Bookmark records

In Intacct you can bookmark any page you want, but more importantly, you can bookmark specific records. This is huge, because while you can use your Favorites menu for your most-used tasks, lists, and reports, you can't favorite a specific record. So take advantage of the unique capability of bookmarks, and bookmark specific records ahead of time so you don't have to go looking later.

For example, let's take the same example from before, and let's say that your boss warned you that this particular vendor needed a contact information update, but you didn't have the new information yet. Instead of going through all the hassle we went through earlier, you could just select the bookmark icon on the right-most side of your navigation bar while viewing the vendor record and then select Bookmark this page. Later, when you have the updated contact information, you can just select the bookmark icon again and go straight to the record from there; no extra navigation or list filtering or sorting necessary.

To use this feature most effectively, remember to bookmark specific records that are unfinished, might need an update soon, or that you return to regularly. Favorite lists, tasks, and reports that you use often.

Use and create views

The way a list is arranged, filtered, and sorted is called a view. Intacct provides standard views and views that filter for recently viewed or recently modified list items. However, you can also create your own, custom views that support your personal workflows better than the standard ones. For example, if you wanted to see all journal entries that have a draft status, you could create a view that filters the list for only these entries.

• Watch a demo about how to create and edit custom views.

• Read more about Custom views