Postcode History Refference using Postcode Lookup and Printer for add line to file

Have been thinking the last few days about how if you dont want to purchase the postcode database for your area at the very least you could utilise the postcode lookup feature to utilise the postcodes you already have on record.
Someone may have already done or tried but couldnt find a topic regarding the idea
My thought is that perhaps using the print option of add line to file that a rule for entity creation (however dont see a event for that) @emre would that be hard to add? that adds a line to the postcode text file using the data of a new entity so that when you get the next person from that village/street etc it remembers the main part of the address from the previous customer.
I cant see it being that hard to implement using text printer and few fairly simple rules/actions…
Anyone interested in that idea?

I got confused here.

How would it determine which village or street goes with the main part?

How do you mean?

In UK postcode generally would be for a street or small village.
My village has two postcodes - one for each end, maybe 100 houses at each end. So you would have two postcodes with same, ‘City’, ‘Town’, ‘Village/Street’

How would you configure it so it knows which one goes with which postcode? I am trying to wrap my head around this. I think we can do something with v5 to automate this even further but im not understanding what your needing.

A print template something like;

''{ENTITY DATA:Postcode}'',''{ENTITY DATA:City}'',''{ENTITY DATA:Street}''

As add line to postcode .txt

Ok so your saying you enter the postcode information manually when you create customer and then it adds it to a txt file for lookup later?

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Quick question can you look this information up with google maps?

Yes, that was the thought.
Ideally you would prefer to have a way to distinguish if the postcode is already listed but only a .txt file and beleive Samba just pulls the first matching entry anyway.

Could maybe just import to excel and remove duplicates once a year or something.

So to grasp this entirely can you demonstrate how it might work? I mean I need to see the actual usage…

So if you look up by postcode it pulls up the person?

No, is not for looking up people but for you to build your own PAF (is it PAF) type database.
If you take postcode before address if you have already had a customer from that postcode the majority of the address will be prefilled as it would from a postcode database if you purchased one.

So your saying its for entering postcode for customers faster? Well I mean addresses based on postcode. Ive briefly seen the postcode requests but i never really looked into it… can you explain from start the benefit of having the postcode in samba?

Yes, in the same way you can do the postcode lookup at the minute except you built your own postcode->address list from your new entities.

Not sure about elsewhere but here for example, best price ive seen is £50 per postcode prefix, we hapen to be 1 mile from 4 shire/county stone where there are four counties within 1 mile so you would need to get 4 postcode area lists.

I cant do postcode lookup I have not messed with that type of setup. So im asking can you explain the benefit of it… what does it do exactly? If i can grasp this I can help you automate something. When you say its the same way you can do the postcode lookup thats assuming I have that configured which i dont.

You set a entity field (postcode) as a ‘Query’ and map $1, $2, $3 etc (columns from CVS type file to customer filed names.
If you enter postcode first it references to the file and if theres a match it prefills the address for that customer.
As postcode databases can get expencive you could opt so that if you have delivered or whatever to someone in that postcode it will in essence remember the postcode (by adding it to the csv/txt file) so if you take postcode first and have it on record you would only need house name/number as street, town/city are frefilled from the list.

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Ok thats what I thought let me look into some things… I think with v5 we can automate this further without needing the txt file.

Even better (if your working with the API) would be if the Google Maps API supports some form of postcode lookup which would make the PAF database requirement redundant for live online data…
THIS WOULD BE ANOTHER HUGE FEATURE TO GO ALONG SIDE THE DISTANCE CALCULATION YOU POSTED A COUPLE OF TIMES -WHICH IS AWESOME ENOUGH ITSELF :smile:

Thats what I was going to do. I think it should be possible.

Think allot of people would be interested in that!

Can you give me an address to test with?

Todenham, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire GL56 9NY