[16.3.19] Added "Code" field to inventory kits and invoice items

The latest versions introduces new Item Code field on inventory kits, sales invoice items and purchase invoice items. Previously Item Code field was available in inventory items only.

If you are not using inventory kits, sales invoice items or purchase invoice items, this update won’t affect you. If you are using any of these three modules, the latest version will show Item Code on printed documents such as invoices, orders or quotes. Previously Item Name was shown on printed documents instead.

The reason for this change is to make inventory items, inventory kits and invoice items consistent in what fields they have and how these fields are used so they can be all available for lookup under Items column when preparing invoices, quotes or orders. Currently only invoice items are available under Items column, inventory items are selectable only after selecting proper inventory account which is adding unnecessary friction.

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Thank you. I have been wanting this for a while! Cheers

when will there be a report on inventory kits or invoice items sold or purchased or produced?

@lubos This is very very bad !! I dont use inventory items. However, now on all my quotation, sales order, INV etc. all my item nr./code are gone !! We have more then 300 items and now??? What to do?
see screen shots below - first pic shows how we did in past. Second how situation is now, all item gone - only description is left

Yeah, item name will no longer be shown on invoices, orders and quotes. But there is new Item Code field which will show on invoice, orders and quotes. You just need to go to Sales Invoice Items and update your items so what you want to be seen on invoice is in Item Code field.

This update solves issue for some users who use invoice items purely for autocomplete purposes and don’t want item name to be shown to customers at all as it’s usually not meaningful.

For those who have strong preference to show item name, you need to update your invoice items to put that information under Item Code field.

great, now i have to update more then 300 items because of this changes!!! thats bad…

A post was split to a new topic: Custom field at the bottom

@lubos, small issue. Is it possible to change the name “Code” to Item Code or similar like this. The name CODE will confuse our customer

You can use Batch update button in bottom-right corner which will allow you to export your invoice items to spreadsheet. You can update fields in spreadsheet and import changes back into Manager.

Why do you want to use another column at all. Why not have all the information in description column?

i need now to fill out both areas, item code and item name !
when i leave item name empty, i cannot find it anymore in sales order

@lubos, then when i leave “Item Code” empty, i can find it at sales order, this is ok BUT when i print it, its all gone, only can see description. So my only way to find it and have it printed on Sales order is to fill out both fields

Yeah, but why not make your “item code” part of the description? Item name is how you find the item in the list and Item description is what customer will see.

first of all this is a hell of work to change all this. Secondly, when you do trading issue, then it is clear that you have “Item Nr.” Item Name, Description. So for example

Item Nr. Item Name Description
4711 Hinge Material aisi 304…

this all was no problem before. Since this changes i facing really big issue. Now seems i have to change and adjust more then 300 items and all others like Order, INV etc…

@lubos I work in IT and I deal with customers on a daily basis. The one thing that I have learnt over the years is the single biggest frustration end users have with IT Technicians and developers is lack of communication. You cannot simply make big changes and expect the end users to “just do this and this” to fix their issue which was caused by the IT guy’s update. For example, its the end of tax year for a lot people right now. The last thing that they need is unexpected work dropping in at this critical time.

I have no doubt that you needed to make the change (and reading this post I now understand far better the work process as you intended it to work, which is why its not been working for me), but you either need to update the update routine to inform end users that this update will do xyz and require users to do abc. That way it doesn’t come as a shock surprise when people update and find half their data missing. Or you need to communicate with your customers that update version 16 will make these changes.

As another user suggested you need to have an update schedule of minor updates and major updates. Minor updates being bug fixes and small feature improvements that basically change nothing else in the program. A major update would be a massive change in the summary screen and this particular update for example. Having a minor and major update system will enable your customers to be aware that a major update will change things quite a bit and it is up to the customer to decide when to proceed with that update.

Another suggestion that I can recommend is to take a select number of users from the Manager forum and use them as a sounding board for program features and improvements. This particular issue and the new summary page look - the updates would work better if you ask your customers for feedback on what you propose to do and they can tell you whether this would work for them or not. Using a broad range of forum users would ensure that you get all aspects of the program covered as some people use billable expenses (I never use that), but I use inventory items a lot, whereas other people don’t.

Otherwise you will continue to have customers updating their software and coming back and complaining.

On a second note, reading this particular post it is very clear that the way that I use the name and code columns in inventory and as a result sales quotes, delivery notes etc is very different from the way that you appear to recommend using them and this explains why I am having problems with the work flow from inventory items - sales quote - sales invoice - to delivery notes.

What I have been doing is using Item Name in Sales Invoice Items for the name of the product for example Backup 100GB Annual Online Storage and the description “Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Snapshots” As you can see from my picture, its more readable to separate the name from the description in both edit and form view.

See picture below

The same concept in Inventory Items. I have been using Code for the product name and name for the product code and description for the product details. See attached picture.

The reason that I put the code in the name field in inventory items was because if I used code in the code field, when I was creating a sales quote for example all I got was the code in the inventory on hand lookup which is not very helpful to me if I don’t know what the code for the Ipad Air 2 is! Dietmar demonstrated this with his picture above, although my problem stems from inventory items not from sales invoice items. The reason I want to split the product name Ipad Air 2 and the description (which contains the specifications of the Ipad) is so that its easier to find the product Ipad Air 2 and the customer is interested in the name Ipad Air 2, not all the technical specs. I don’t see that it makes sense to have say Fujitsu Lifebook S751 (which is Manufacturer, Model range and Model number) listed in description. The description should be CPU specs, memory specs, hard drive specs etc. I don’t want the product name and the description all together!

I am now finally understanding why you only have description in the delivery notes as your design is to have the product name and product description in the same field. However I feel that its better to have two default fields for sales quotes/orders/invoices and delivery notes on the end form. That of product name and product description and one can optionally include part code if so desired. And three fields for purchase orders/invoices - That of product name, part code and product description. I agree with @Dietmar. He obviously works like me in that he likes to have a product name, product code and product description. All he had done with sales invoice items is put the code and name together because we did not have the product code field before this update.

May I suggest that if some users don’t want to show product name (why do they want to put the product name in the description field anyway as its always better to separate product name say Castrol Oil Magma from description - 2Litre 50% synthetic etc - why would anyone want the name and description all in one field as it makes it less readable if you have a lot of items on the invoice.), they could opt to hide that column in their sales invoice etc.

May I also suggest you do a survey and ask how people want the inventory items and purchase invoice items and sales invoice items to work and make a plan based on what most people want. The reason being as Dietmar pointed out - updating inventory and sales invoice items etc is extremely time consuming - he has over 300 entries and I myself have over 100 inventory items. So I actually think asking the people who use inventory items and sales/purchase invoice items how they actually use the software and make changes based on that. I would recommend that you release a new update reversing 16.3.19’s update changes and then do a new update once everyone is clear how they want to use the columns in inventory items and purchase/sales invoice items and we can get this workflow issue fixed properly for once and for all so that it works for all users.

I would be interested in hearing from other users who use inventory, purchase/sales invoice items and have a round the table discussion about what fields we want visible in the edit area and in the finished form area. I personally would like to have a product name field and a product description field rather than combining the two. Also I would the same discussion to be had for Statuses of quotes and orders so that we convert to orders/invoices and by default only see quotes/orders that are open and get that show on the road! This is something that really needs to be sorted out.

In short - communication with issues like this would make the world of difference!

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Just to illustrate a real world example the effect of updates. I am still using the pre-new summary page version purely because I wanted to wait until this week coming up to upgrade to the latest version and then implement custom control accounts and sub accounts and design my income/expense accounts and summary page all in one go ready for my end of year accounts.

So knowing about how the summary page changes affects things meant that I have delayed updating Manger to the latest version as I did’t have time to work on custom control accounts and sub accounts to make the new summary page look work for me! I have only been updating Manager to the latest version on my laptop merely to view the changes.

However, because its end of year for my tax return and I want to do a lot of re-organisation for creating new income accounts and possibly eliminate tracking codes next week, I am now unable to upgrade to a newever version to do the summary accounts and custom control accounts and sub accounts because I don’t have time right now to move all my product names from the names field to the code field for purchase invoice items and sales invoice items! I have enough work next week booked in to do the accounts that I don’t want to add to my work load moving all the fields around in sales/purchase invoice items especially as I think that the name column and description column should be separate as explained above and in my other post this evening.

Before I update from the pre-new-summary look, I will have to wait and see how the future of columns in inventory items and sales/purchase invoice items will work out so as to prevent time consuming changes now and possibly again in the future.

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Fair enough. How about this update I just did?

It will allow you to have product name in description while putting the name in bold.

There is Batch update button which will allow you to update all invoice items fairly quickly.

I am not understanding how you want the system to work. Let me demonstrate with an example.

For example if I am selling a laptop say Fujitsu Lifebook E546 with 128GB SSD drive.
If I put in the code field VFY:E5460M752OGB which is the part code for the laptop, when I go to say sales quote I will see the part code which correct and good, but I don’t see the description from the inventory sales drop down menu! So all I have got is the part code VFY:E5460M752OGB but I cannot tell what product is what from the part code alone!

So I can fix this by either putting Fujitsu Lifebook E546 in the code field along with the part code and this enables the client to see the product name on the quote or invoice - which is really not logical as I would like to separate the product name from product code or I can put the name of the laptop in the name field which allows me to see both the name of the product and the part code! However, for the client to see the name of the product using the system the way you want me to use it (ie not putting the name in the code field) means that I have to put the name of the product Lifebook E546 in the description field as well so I am duplicating the name in the description field and in the name field. I don’t understand the logic in having to put the name of the product in the name field (so that I can see it in the drop down menu) and still have to put the name of the product in the description field so that the client can see the name of the product. In essence I am duplicating the name in the name field and putting it into the description field so I can see the name when editing the sales quote and the client can see the name in the description field.

In addition if I am selling four different Lifebook E546 laptops, one with 500Gb HDD, one with 256GB SSD drive, one with core i5 CPU and one with Core i3 CPU I have to put the specs in the name field as well because otherwise when I view the drop down list and I have four Lifebook E546 laptops, I cannot tell which one has the core i5, 256GB SSD as neither the name Lifebook E546 nor the part code tells me what the specs are and I cannot see the description field in the dropdown. So essentially speaking you are basically saying that I need to duplicate almost everything in the description field into the name field so that I can see which laptop is which in the drop down edit and the client can see the name of the laptop and specifications in the description field.

I hope that you can understand that using your system as you recommend it means that I am duplicating a lot of the information in the description field with the name field. I think the simplest solution for me would be to use the code field as the name field and use the name field as the code field. That way both myself and the client can see all the information in edit and final view mode. The only thing that would need to be addressed then would be to add the code field to the delivery notes. But this highlights that your recommended method of using the code, name and description fields doesn’t work for me and presumably other people as well as I would have to duplicate almost everything in the description field into the name field or I would have to use the name and code fields the wrong way around!

I will have a look at the batch update, but the point that I am making with the updates is that it would be better all round if we had a minor/major updates kind of system so that end users don’t update thinking its a minor patch and then discover that they have stop doing whatever work they have lined up and concentrate on changing things to address the latest update. I have not got time to do the inventory right now. I want to focus on creating more income accounts and getting rid of some of the tracking codes so that I can more quickly view what divisions are bringing in what income and what its costing me to run. Then I need to hand over my accounts to my accountant.

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However, the one drawback with my using the code field as the name field and using the name field as the code field means that I am stuck not having the part codes visible in purchase orders so this might not be the best method for me. However, this still would be preferable to duplicating most of the description field with the name field. I don’t want duplication.

I don’t think this really classifies as a duplication. In Name field you put whatever name that will allow you to find the item quickly in drop-down. Whether it’s code, friendly-name or whatever. The idea is that by not showing name field on invoices, quotes and orders, you have a freedom to really use any name and not to be concerned what customer sees. This is what Description field is for.

See, and this is the first use-case demonstrating what I’m trying to say. You want Name field to be visible on invoice. Then how do you name similar products so they can be distinguished from each other so it’s easy for you to select the right item. Do you make item name really long to capture all the information in description? Then why do you need description?

My proposal is that you should name the products in your example like this:

  • Lifebook-E546-500Gb-i5
  • Lifebook-E546-500Gb-i3
  • Lifebook-E546-256SSD-i3
  • Lifebook-E546-256SSD-i5

Really compact names, easy to look up and not to worry how unprofessional it looks like because customer will never see it. They will see official part code number (optional) and professional looking description of the item.

Also, when you view inventory reports, these inventory item names will be easy to recognize on reports because that’s what you are used to select when creating invoices, quotes or orders.

Your solution would be to allow in drop-down lookup to show code, name and also description. Because otherwise you say you can’t find the product quickly. That’s a lot of text to describe one inventory item. If you need all that information in drop-down lookup to distinguish between individual items, then your inventory item reports should contain all this information too. The problem is, inventory reports with all those column have limited space for item name. Showing code+name+description would mean your inventory items on reports would span 5 or more lines each instead of just one. You’d complain about this the moment you’d start relying on inventory reports.

There is one improvement I can make though. If you don’t enter anything in Description field on invoices, Manager will show item name as your description instead (so description is never empty). This way you can put all the information in item name field if you like. That will be also valid workflow.

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Ok @lubos you are winning me over with your line of reasoning. I can see your point about showing description field and name field in drop down menu being a lot of text. Also was not aware of how this would affect inventory reports which I will be using next week ironically enough.

Ok, I will do a backup of the program and see if I can do a batch update to change the inventory items and the purchase/sales invoice items and get it to work the way you suggested because I will acknowledge that perhaps there is not as much duplication as I was complaining about - some but not a lot.

Doing it as you suggest will fix my issues of not having the code on the purchase order and will mean that I will have the details of the product on the delivery notes as well as being able to tell which laptop is which! I won’t need the part code on the delivery notes - at least ways I can’t really see that as being necessary to be honest.

Ok thank you. :slight_smile: