Address autocomplete for faster customer entry
In Swiftly Workspace, the magnifying glass in a customer or vendor address form opens Search Address. Type part of an address, a business name or a place, pick a suggestion, and the street, city, state or province, postal code and country fill in for you to check and save.
Typing addresses by hand is slow and invites small mistakes: a swapped digit in a postal code, a misspelled street, a country left blank. Each one can come back later as a returned letter or an invoice with the wrong address on it. Address search gets you a complete address in a few keystrokes.
How address search works
The suggestions come from Apple's MapKit search. The app sends what you type to Apple's maps service and lists what comes back; Swiftly's own server isn't part of the lookup. It looks for three kinds of results:
- Street addresses, such as a street name and number.
- Business names, handy when you know the company but not its address.
- Landmarks and places, such as a business park or a station.
Suggestions appear after a short pause in your typing, so the list doesn't jump with every key. The search is not tied to where you are, and the app doesn't ask for your location. That means a short query can match places in another country, so add the town or the country when results look far away. A postal code plus a street name is often the quickest way to the right row, and a company name works well for offices and shops that maps already know.
Where to find it
| Device | Customer address | Vendor address |
|---|---|---|
| Mac | The customer's window, Addresses, then +; the magnifying glass is in the New Address toolbar | The same in the vendor's window |
| iPhone and iPad | The customer's Addresses tab, then +; the magnifying glass is at the top of New Address | The same on the vendor's record |
The button also appears when you edit an existing address. It shows for people whose role can edit address fields; someone who can view addresses but not change them doesn't see it.
Add an address with search
- Open a new address. From the customer, go to Addresses and click or tap +.
- Open the search. Click or tap the magnifying glass (Search Address).
- Type. In Search for an address, business, or place, type a few words: a street and town, a postal code, or the company's name.
- Pick a suggestion. The sheet closes and the form now holds Address Line 1, the city, the state or province, the postal code and the country.
- Check and complete. Add a second address line if the building needs one, and mark it as the default billing or shipping address if it is.
- Save. Click or tap the checkmark.
If nothing matches, the sheet says No results found and suggests a different address, business name or postal code. You can always close it and type the address yourself.
Why a complete address matters
The customer's address ends up on every invoice you send them, and in many countries the rules for invoices expect the buyer's address on them. A missing postal code or a blank country is easy to overlook while typing and awkward to fix once a document has gone out. Picking a suggestion fills the whole set of fields in one go, so the address is complete from the start and spelled the way the map knows it.
Tips for clean addresses
- Search by company name for businesses. A registered office often shows up under the company's name, which saves you looking it up.
- Check the street line. Map data writes house numbers the local way, which may differ from what the customer prints on their letterhead. Adjust it if the customer asks.
- One address record per place. Billing and shipping addresses that differ are separate records on the same customer. How to structure customers, contacts and addresses explains the pattern.
- Search fills fields you can edit. If your role can't change a field, search leaves it as it is.
Address search is one step in adding a customer. The full walk-through is in how to add a customer on iPhone or iPad and how to add a customer on Mac, and Quick Create and keyboard shortcuts on Mac speeds up the rest. Once you have hundreds of customers with tidy addresses, large customer lists covers finding them again.
Frequently asked questions
Does address autocomplete need access to my location?
No. The search isn't tied to where you are and the app doesn't ask for location access. Add the town or country to your query to steer the results.
Where do the address suggestions come from?
From Apple's MapKit search. The app sends your query to Apple's maps service and shows the matching addresses, businesses and places. The lookup doesn't go through Swiftly's server.
What if the suggested address is slightly wrong?
Edit the fields before you save. Search fills them in, but they stay ordinary fields you can change, for example to match the way a customer writes their street or building name.
Can I still type an address by hand?
Yes. Search is optional. Close the sheet, or skip it, and fill in the fields yourself.
Does address search work for supplier addresses too?
Yes. Vendor addresses have the same magnifying glass, on Mac and on iPhone and iPad.
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