There are some useful shortcuts for entering dates in Trams Back Office and ClientBase.
Date always display in the MM/DD/YYYY format (if your computer is set to use the U.S. date format.[1] but it’s not necessary to enter the date the same way. Try using some of the following shortcuts to make entering dates easier and faster.
If you need to enter a specific date, you can use slashes as you see them displayed. It is not necessary to enter any preceding zeroes or the century. For example, for January 1, 2018, you can simply type 1/1/18. TBO and CB will change the date to 01/01/2018.
Another easy way to select dates is by using the pop-up calendar. In TBO, simply double-click on any date field to display the calendar. In CB, click on the calendar icon next to the date field.
There are several even shorter ways to enter dates without using any slashes. Simply use two digits for month, day and year. If you’re used to entering dates in a GDS such as Sabre, you can also use those formats for entering dates in TBO and CB[1].
For example:
| Description | Entry | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Month, day and year | 092207 | 09/22/2007 |
| Month and day | 0714 | 07/14/2019 |
| Day of this month | 15 | 03/15/2019 |
| GDS Format | 15APR | 04/15/2019 |
| GDS Format with Year | 15APR18 | 04/15/2018 |
Using date formulas.
The simplest use for date formulas is to enter today’s date. By just typing “=”, the programs will enter today’s date. You can also quickly calculate days before or after today by using the plus (“+”) or minus (“-”) signs.
For example:
| Entry | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| = | Today’s Date | 03/07/2019 |
| =+7 | Seven Days from Today | 03/14/2019 |
| =–7 | Seven Days Before Today | 02/28/2019 |
There are many more advanced to use date formulas to make running reports and generating queries easier. I’ll go into more details about date formulas in an upcoming blog entry.
- If your computer is setup to use European (DD/MM/YYYY) or ANSI (YYYY-MM-DD) formats, the examples on this page will need to be changed a bit to match your computer’s settings. Using GDS formats (DDMMM or DDMMMYY) will work regardless of your computer’s date setting. ↩
