Picklist items are the building blocks of how you can add cost to your events or bookings in Tripleseat. They represent the goods and services that you charge your guests. Either in Settings or when you add picklist items to your documents, you will notice that each item has a three-dot button to the right. When you click there, it will expand the picklist item so you can see all field options. There is the regular Description field where folks normally list out the name of the item they are selling. There is also a Long Description field for every item. This article explores the purpose of that field and how users can leverage it.
The Long Description field is a way for you to communicate information to some people via the documents while withholding it from others. Imagine you sell a Simple Fried Rock Shrimp item. Each order should come with 6 shrimp per serving. You may not want the guest to see “6 per serving” on their Contract or BEO; however, you do want your Chef and kitchen staff to see that per serving information on the Kitchen Sheet. If you place the regular item description in the regular Description field, and insert the “6 per serving” text into the Long Description, you can then choose what document layouts display either some or all of that information.
Common reasons why users leverage the Long Description field:
- To communicate information to their Kitchen team that they do not want to share with the guest.
- To elaborate on pre-fixe menus or packages (e.g. description field is "Luxury Wedding Package" long description field would say "Exclusive use of the venue, 6 consecutive hours of access, onsite coordinator for the day of the event, etc.."). The invoice or BEO layout could show just the abbreviated item description, but the Proposal and Contract could include the full explanation including both the regular and long description.
- To communicate information to whoever is prepping catering orders (the description would be "5 Taco Boxes" and the long descriptions would say "plastic cutlery and napkins to be included per order").
| Sample BEO without the Long Description field visible | Sample Kitchen Sheet with the Long Description field visible |
The Long Description field can be enabled per document layout, and this article HERE provides instructions about how to do that.