OK - we now know (from 6929 onwards) that the the 'common title stuff in a subreport' works. So now what to do about its contents? The possibilities are:

a) use the practice information via the party:getPractice functions

b) use the location information via the party:getxxx($location) functions

c) add a new entity called say letterhead which can be linked to the PracticeLocation. This would contain the various components of the letterhead, ie path to logo, name, address, contacts, tax registration - where address and contacts are multiline text blocks which the user can format as desired. eg the contact block could be:
     P: 02-1234-5678
     E: info[at]xyzvets[dot]com
     W: www.xyzvets.com
or
     Phone: 02-1234-5678  email: info[at]xyzvets[dot]com

Using a letterhead entity makes it simple for the (common) setup where different practice locations are used simply to allow for different default printers but which should all use the same letterhead.

Using a path to a logo (rather than holding the logo in the database) is necessary to get Studio to pull in the required logo. Note that Studio handles varying image sizes quite well - see http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/sample.reference/images/index.html

The 'tax registration' would contain both the title (ABN, VAT Reg.) and the actual number/code.

Accessing the letterhead information would be via the report fields facility - eg $F{OpenVPMS.location.letterhead.address}

My preference is obviously C - and I think that the new letterhead entity should be administated via Administration|Templates

Regards, Tim G

This project is proceeding well and I have converted all the customer documents (invoice, credit, receipt, etc) to use the common letterhead.

I am now attacking the statement.  The letterhead part is easy. However, the Remittance Advice is a problem (as far as the project goal of 'out of the box useable documents without needing Jaspersoft Studio expertise').

In a remittance advice one needs the following:

• which credit cards are accepted and how
• bank transfer/direct deposit/eft instructions
• cheques (and checks) to be written to

I think that the most generalised way of handling this is to provide 4 more fields on the letterhead screen as follows:

All of the right hand column fields are optional. If not filled in then that item will be missing from the remittance advice.

Note that I used 'Payment Option 3' rather than 'Cheque Instructions' because of the Cheque/Check problem.

I am not sure what you might use as Option 4, but I thought it should be provided for.

The term 'Direct Deposit' is my best guess at a universal name for Direct Credit/Bank Transfer/EFT.  The 'Direct Deposit Reference' field provides the label for the transfer reference field - if the 'Direct Deposit Reference' is not blank then the reference is generated as the first 4 letters of the customer name plus their customer id - eg GETH 1234567.

Note that in the standard statement I do not intend to provide support for payment by BPAY - I figure any practice big enough to use BPAY can afford to do the required adjustments using Studio.

Comments please.

Regards, Tim G