Using Field Stashing When You’re Low On Custom Fields

Field stashing is a technique that you can use when you're running low on custom fields or just when you need to use a field temporarily. It involves selecting a field that is not being used in your system. There are lots of fields that are never used in most installations. Some common examples are: Anniversary, Spouse Name, all of the address 3 fields, Nickname, SSN, Password, etc. Now many of you use some of those fields, so just ignore those and only pick a field that you know you are not using anywhere in the app.

NOTE: If you're using a field for stashing like this, it's a good idea to change the system label for that field in Infusionsoft so that it's entire meaning is changed and other users don't use it by accident.

Now the process of stashing goes like this. In your sequence, first you do whatever calculations or custom helper functions that you need and then you “stash” that value into the custom scratch field (the field you've decided is save to use because it's not being utilized in the app). Then you would use that value – either in other helpers or calculations or decision diamonds, or, more commonly, in an email merge. After that, you simply reset the value of the field by calling the Clear It Helper to remove the temporary data.

So, you use it, merge it, then clear it again for future re-use.

Field stashing like this can be very useful in complex formatting or calculations. You can use a couple of stashed fields or more as necessary during your campaign and then, at the end, go back and clear them out. It's good practice to have a field fields designated for this purpose so you always know you've got some place you can “stash” data temporarily when you need it!