Global Find searches many parts of The Business Assistant at once. Use it when you know a piece of information (a phone number, a serial number, a dollar amount, a date) but not which record it belongs to.

Where to Find It #

Open the My Stuff tab on the navbar and choose Global Find. It is available to everyone who can log in, but you only see results from areas you have permission to view.

If you don’t see it on the My Stuff menu, log out and back in, or use Refresh permissions, so your navbar reloads.

What It Searches #

Global Find looks in these areas, shown as two columns of checkboxes under Search in:

Customer side	Vendor and item side
Clients	Vendors
Quotes	Purchase Orders
Sales/Service Orders	Bills
Invoices	Bill Payments
Client Payments	Vendor Communications
Client Communications	Items
	Inventory

It also looks inside the information attached to them, and shows the record it belongs to:

• Clients and vendors: addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, web addresses, and contacts.
• Items and inventory: ID rows (serial numbers, UPCs, service tags) and prices.
• Quotes, orders, invoices, bills, and purchase orders: the line items.

For example, searching for a customer’s phone number shows the client, not the phone record, and searching for a serial number shows the inventory lot or the client who bought it.

The communication logs (Client Communications and Vendor Communications) are searched as their own areas. A match there opens the communication entry itself, with the method, date, and notes.

How to Search #

1. Choose what kind of value you are looking for in Look for a.
2. Type the value. For Money, Quantity, Date, and Time, you can also enter a to value to search a range.
3. Leave Search in as it is to search every area, or untick the areas you don’t need. Tick All or None to select or clear every area at once. A narrower search is faster.
4. Click Search (or press Enter).

Results appear area by area as each one finishes. Each result shows the record’s name or number, and underneath it where the match was found, for example “Phone – Phone: (555) 123-4567”.

Click a result to open that record in a new browser tab. Your results stay on the Global Find tab, so you can open several records one after another without searching again. Let the search finish before you click a result.

The Types of Search #

Choosing the right type makes the search more accurate and faster, because the value is compared the way it is stored.

Type	What to enter	Example
Text	Words or part of a word, found anywhere in a text field. Capital letters don’t matter. Use * as a wildcard. At least 2 characters.	acme, 555-12, smi*th
Money	A dollar amount. Add a “to” amount for a range. It is shown with cents and commas, for example 1,234.50.	125.50, or 100 to 200
Quantity	A quantity. Add a “to” quantity for a range.	2, 0.25
Date	A date, picked from the calendar or typed. Add a “to” date for a range.	10/2/2026
Time	A time of day, picked from the time list or typed. Add a “to” time for a range.	9:30 am, 14:15
Number	A whole record number: invoice#, SO#, quote#, PO#, bill#, payment#, SKU#, or account#.	1042

A few notes:

• A text search for a phone number also matches when the number was entered with different punctuation. Searching 5551234 finds (555) 123-4567.
• Money, quantity, date, and time searches only find records that have that value in a matching field, such as an invoice total, a line amount, or an order date.
• A Number search finds records by their own number only.

Voided and Inactive Records #

By default, voided and inactive records are left out: voided invoices, orders, bills and payments, inactive clients and items, and superseded quote versions. Tick Include voided / inactive records to search them too.

What You Will and Won’t See #

• You only see what you are allowed to see. If you don’t have permission to view invoices, for example, invoices are not offered or searched. Client and vendor communications are offered only to users who can view them.
• Some information is never searched, regardless of permissions. This includes personnel, HR, payroll and timeclock records, user logins, payment card details, vendor tax information, and item and invoice cost or profit figures.
• Invoices follow the site you are working in, the same as the Invoice list.

If There Are Too Many Results #

Each area shows up to 50 records. If there are more, the area is marked More matches exist – narrow the search. Add more of the value you are looking for, use a range, or untick the areas you don’t need.

If an area takes too long to search, it says so. Narrow the search to see all of it.

Global Find or the Find Pages? #

The Find pages (for example Client Find or Invoice Find) search one area using that area’s own fields, such as client, status, and date. Use Global Find when you don’t know which area the information is in, or when you want to search a value across several areas at once.

Related: The Basics