I want to add few fields to every model in my django application. This time it's created_at, updated_at and notes. Duplicating code for every of 20+ models seems dumb. So, I decided to use abstract base class which would add these fields. The problem is that fields inherited from abstract base class come first in the field list in admin. Declaring field order for every ModelAdmin class is not an option, it's even more duplicate code than with manual field declaration.

In my final solution, I modified model constructor to reorder fields in _meta before creating new instance:

class MyModel(models.Model):
    # Service fields
    notes = my_fields.NotesField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

    last_fields = ("notes", "created_at", "updated_at")
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        new_order = [f.name for f in self._meta.fields]
        for field in self.last_fields:
            new_order.remove(field)
            new_order.append(field)
        self._meta._field_name_cache.sort(key=lambda x: new_order.index(x.name))
        super(TwangooModel, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)

class ModelA(MyModel):
    field1 = models.CharField()
    field2 = models.CharField()
    #etc ... 

It works as intended, but I'm wondering, is there a better way to acheive my goal?