Getting started with custom fields

All Scoro modules and views include a comprehensive set of default fields for managing your work. However, every business has its own unique requirements – and sometimes the information you need to capture doesn’t quite fit any of the default fields. This is where custom fields come into play! 

By creating custom fields, you can adapt your Scoro site to match your exact business data and operational needs.

Custom fields can be added and managed under Settings > Site settings > Custom fields.

This article will guide you through the basics of custom fields in Scoro – what they are, how they behave across the platform, and how to manage permissions and limit access to specific custom fields. 

We have separate articles for more guidance on custom field creation:

• Creating and managing custom fields
• Creating formula custom fields

1. What are custom fields?

Custom fields are specialized data fields you can create to tailor your Scoro site to your specific workflows. They allow you to collect, track, and analyze information specific to your business use case that is not covered by standard fields available on all Scoro sites.

These are just a few examples of opportunities that custom fields can unlock for your site:

• Capture specific data: Track unique information elements directly within your project, task, or document views, such as supplier types, industry categories, and more.
• Upgrade your reports: Filter and group your data in the detailed work and financial reports using your custom fields.
• Automate calculations: Use dedicated formula fields to automatically calculate various financial or duration data on your documents in real time. 
• Personalize your client-facing documents: Pull custom field values directly into your PDFs for quotes, invoices, and more.
• Trigger actions in external tools: Create trigger buttons in Scoro to automatically deploy workflows in external platforms via webhooks.

You can create and manage custom fields under Settings > Site settings > Custom fields.

2. Custom field types

Scoro offers 15 distinct custom field formats, with each being optimized for specific data structures and inputs:

• Text: A text box with defined height and width configurations. It supports rich HTML text formatting (such as bolding, italics, underlines, tables, and bullet points).
• Checkable textbox: A text box that remains hidden by default and only expands for editing when its companion checkbox is explicitly ticked.
• Checkbox: A binary toggle that stores and displays a clean "Yes" or "No" value based on whether the checkbox is ticked. The data is displayed on PDFs only when ticked.
• Drop-down list: A predetermined list of options for users to choose from.
• Date: A calendar date picker that supports single or multiple dates and can automatically calculate a default date relative to a document's issue date.
• Duration: A specialized input field for entering a time amount in hours and minutes. Data can be entered in various formats, such as 1h 30 min, 1:30, 1,5.
• Date and time: A combined picker interface that captures both a specific calendar date and a time marker simultaneously.
• Number: A standard input field optimized strictly for numeric values. It can also be configured to accept a predefined numeric range – for example, you could use such a custom field to specify a range of possible discounts that can be applied to a quote.
• Money: A field specifically formatted for currency and monetary values. Just like the number field, it also supports range configurations.
• Numbering: A field that automates sequence tracking, starting from a baseline value. For example, you can pre-set the value to 10, and with each new document, this field will increment by 1. You can also configure the field to use only unique numbers.
• Formula: A field that performs dynamic, real-time mathematical calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by referencing other system or custom variables.
• Image: An image upload field where users can add image files in a specific size directly to a document’s detailed view. The uploaded files are also available on your site’s Files module. 
• Subheading: A visual organizational banner used to cleanly break up and section off groups of custom fields within a view.
• Relation: A field for building a dynamic link to map multiple users, contacts, entities, or items to an asset (e.g., linking multiple contact people to a single quote or event).
• Trigger: A clickable button that instantly fires an automated workflow via an external webhook URL.

3. Using custom fields in Scoro

While custom fields can be applied in various ways across your site, they are most commonly used to track, filter, and summarize data in the following views and documents:

• In list views
• In reports
• In quotes, invoices, and other documents

3.1. In list views

Almost all active custom fields, except the subheading, trigger, and relation format ones,  can be displayed as a data column in list views on your site, such as project, task, or quote lists. Because custom fields in Scoro are module-specific rather than global, they will only be available to select as columns in the specific modules you enable during setup. For example, a custom field you’ve enabled only for the quotes list won't clutter your invoice list.

You can also control whether the custom field is available as a filter in the list view.

Duration, Number, and Money format custom fields enabled in specific list views can also be added to the list view’s summary bar, allowing you to track custom metrics specific to your business in the same way as standard Scoro metrics. You can also specify whether you want these fields to display the total value, the average value, or both.

3.2. In reports

Reports in Scoro can also be enriched with data from custom fields to fit your internal reporting workflows:

• Filtering: Almost all active custom fields, except the subheading, trigger, and relation format ones, can be configured to be available as filters in the detailed work report and the detailed financial report.
• Grouping: The Checkbox, Drop-down list, Date, and Relation format fields can be used to group report data, thus providing summarized insights.
• Report summary bar: Similar to the list views, you can add your Numeric, Money, and Duration format custom fields to the summary bar in the detailed work report and detailed financial report.

3.3. In quotes, invoices, and other documents

Custom fields can be used in various document list views – such as the quote list or invoice list –, as well as the document detailed and modify views. You can also pull the custom field values directly into your client-facing PDF templates, ensuring your clients see the relevant project details on their documents.

4. Custom field limits in Scoro plans

Custom fields are available in all Scoro plans; however, the number of custom fields each Scoro plan allows is limited. These limits ensure your site remains performant while providing the flexibility needed for your business size:

• Current plans:
  • Core: Up to 10 custom fields per site.
  • Growth: Up to 20 custom fields per site.
  • Performance: Up to 60 custom fields per site.
  • Enterprise: Up to 180 custom fields per site.
• Legacy plans:
  • Essential: Up to 10 custom fields per site.
  • Standard: Up to 10 custom fields per site.
  • Pro: Up to 20 custom fields per site.
  • Ultimate: Unlimited custom fields.

Reached your plan's limit for custom field creation? Free up space for new custom fields by archiving unused ones, or upgrade your plan to increase your capacity.

For more information on the various Scoro plans, visit our Plans & Pricing page.

5. Managing custom field permissions

Custom fields can be created, modified, and deleted by site users with the Manage custom fields and PDF templates permission in their permission set.

6. Limiting user access to specific custom fields

You can control user access to a specific custom field:

1. When creating or modifying a custom field, tick the Limit access checkbox. An additional dropdown field will appear. 
2. Click on the dropdown field and select who can access this custom field. You can click the Dynamic / Groups tab and select a specific dynamic user or user group, or click the Selected users tab and pick all the users you want to give access to. Don’t forget to save the changes.

Once access to the custom field is restricted, only the selected dynamic user, group, or specific site users will be able to see it; others won’t be able to see it anywhere on the site, including on bookmarks.

Key things to know about limiting custom field access:

• Restricted custom fields cannot be made mandatory. Only custom fields available to any site user can be marked as mandatory.
• Restricting access to a custom field can manipulate data. The same bookmark or a filtered list view that includes data from a custom field will show complete data to users who can access that custom field, but users with restricted access to that same field will see incomplete data. Scoro shows a warning to users when they’re viewing a filtered or bookmarked view with restricted-access fields, but the warning doesn’t specify exactly which data is missing.
  
• Access limitation is useful for testing purposes. You can limit the custom field availability to yourself and other colleagues while you’re still tinkering with your custom field configuration, and make them accessible to everyone once it’s ready for proper use.