Sole trader tips and tricks: Come swap notes!
Even with all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, sometimes what we need is some good advice from a real human!
Being a successful sole trader takes more than just balancing your books ...
Forum Discussion
OK, my number one tip for any iOS/iPadOS/macOS users is to take advantage of "Text Replacements".
I have a couple of hundred set up now, which make typing repetitive things a lot easier.
If I need to enter my phone number, I type "mbsm" ("mobile" + my initials) and my device types out my full mobile number. "emwk" for my work e-mail. "ssrx" for my business name ("Select Strata Reports" + "x" for "expand"), same for my ABN with "ABNx", or "ABNsp" for the ABN with spaces – that way I can still type SSR and ABN without them expanding if I just want those initials.
I have a "bankac" one which is multi-lines and has my personal bank account details for sharing with people.
And so on. Oh, they're text only, too (and unstyled/unformatted, at that).
For iOS/iPadOS, you can find them at:
- Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement
macOS has a button at:
- Settings > Keyboard > Text Input > Text Replacements…
They sync across devices, I find fiddly ones easiest to create on macOS.
Multiline ones are easiest created in another app (say, Mail, or Notes, or even from existing data in Solo) – select all the text you want in the replacement, Copy them from there, then Paste them into the "Phrase" field (iOS/iPadOS) or "With" field on macOS.
iOS Text Replacement creation dialog.macOS Text Replacement creation dialog.It's annoying the differences between the OSes, but that doesn't matter if you only use iOS. The short text is entered into the "Shortcut" (iOS/iPadOS) or "Replace" (macOS) fields – reversed, for extra annoyance!).
The OS will pick up if you start typing the full phrase or when you've typed enough of the shortcut to be "definitive".
Type a space, full stop, comma, Return, etc. and the shortcut will be expanded. Type Escape (or tap/click the little "×") if, for some reason, you want to type the shortcut without it expanding (like if you're typing up instructions on how to use Text Replacements! 🤣).
I've got addresses, organisation names, ticks and crosses, web addresses, symbols, e-mail sign-offs, strata legislation titles, and a few other bits and bobs in there.
You could set up customer or item IDs or names, different sets of terms and conditions for consulting and sales ("tccons", "tcsales")…the sky's the limit. When I was an Apple computer consultant, I would have whole e-mail messages for resetting certain parts of the hardware – I'd just type "pramx" and my Mac would describe how to reset the PRAM in about 5 paragraphs of detailed instructions.
I wish it had "placeholders" so I could easily have a shortcut like "dd" for the current date, but I still get a lot of use out of it.
Hope y'all find that useful – let me know what sorts of text replacements you have (or now set up!).
Sean
Oh, this is GOLD 🤩
I knew you’d have something epic to share StrataGeek, so epic, in fact, that I’m adding this to the Community Lead “Hot Tip” directory.
We sometimes hear from Solmates who need to enter the same information multiple times across different records. Solo has some handy features to help with this, such as saved notes, items, and customer details. But this will be a game changer for information that doesn’t fit neatly into those features.
Thanks for sharing! It really makes our day to see Solmates getting involved here in the community 💜
