I have a form where I use the today function to pre-populate the date of a form that a user fills out and there are some other fields withhin the form that also use the function in conjunction with other functions, for internal purposes to automatically fill in certain parts of the same form before the infromation is uploaded into our accounting system. Once the user submits the form it is saved into a SharePoint document library and then once it is approved, it is saved "on top" of the original pending form as "approved" and awaits to be exported for importing in to our accounting system.
The problem I am encountering is that since the today() function returns the obvious, today, if a user fills out a form on the 1st of the month, the reviewer opens the file to approve it on the 15th, approves it and then saves it to the document library, and then the file, along with all other approved files, is uploaded on the 1st of the subsequent month, all of the dates are different and cause problems.
Ideally I dont want the user to enter the date (this is because the form is meant for mouse clicks, drop down menus, radial buttons, etc... only and no keystrokes), and like I mentioned above I also have a couple other boxes using the today() function to return a value which is supposed to return the value based ONLY on when the user first submits the form. For instance in one case the form is returning the next month and current year only, which is being used as part of the file upload criteria.
So now my question, is there a way to use the today() function when the file is originally opened and then have it "freeze" on that date when it is submitted, and not changed when subsequently approved and saved in the database? Im taking a wild guess that if it is it requires some programming knowledge, but im hoping not.
I hope this makes sence and any help on this would be greatly appreciated.