How are Deliverables sorted / displayed on an invoice?
Deliverables are sorted by the Deliverable ID, not based on the first letter of the description.
When setting up and using deliverables, SILQ will group time entries based on the deliverables they are associated with, within a given matter and ultimately within the invoice.
If you would like Deliverables displayed in a particular order within the Invoice, then you will need to ensure that the Fee Earner ID's are created in such a way that they can be sorted in ascending order.
For example, if you have 4 Deliverables being:
Description Deliverable ID
First Stage S1
Second Stage S2
Third Stage S3
Fourth Stage S4
In the above example, you would need to ensure that the Deliverable ID is in a numbered order, otherwise if we were to display based on description, it would show as First Stage, Fourth Stage, Third Stage etc which of course we know is not correct. Hence why the Deliverable ID is the source of truth when sorting.
Please be aware that because the Deliverable ID field is alpha-numeric, not just numeric, if you are using numbers you need to ensure you use leading zero's. For example, say you had 20 Deliverables and you simply numbered them 1,2,3, etc.
You would actually have Deliverable 10 displayed as the 2nd grouping, Deliverable 11 displayed as the 3rd grouping etc on the invoice, because when sorting by numbers only in an alpha-numeric field it sorts by the first number first. Therefore, without leading zero's you would get 1, 10, 11, 2, 20, 21, 3, 4 etc
If however you added the leading zero's, so that it was entered as 01, 02, 03 etc you would get the sorting displayed in the order you intended.