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

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:

There is another problem with the change. We sell quite a lot of items on sale or return, and the customer specifies their own code for each item. With the new change it is not possible to change the code for the particular sales quote or invoice, and there is nowhere else to put the customer’s code. Can this be changed so that the Code field is editable for the individual invoice, just as the Description field can be edited individually?

@mjc, I don’t think this update has changed anything in relation to use-case you are describing.

If there are multiple codes for specific inventory item, you can create an invoice item and customer code and link it to inventory item. Then select invoice item and customer code will be shown in Code column.

I wanted to request this a long time ago (I may have done already but can’t remember!)

In the drop-down list of inventory items on quotes/invoice, I would like to see Item Code and a short single line of description, about the same size of the original description box but without showing more than one line until selected.
I also have a similar problem as @dalacor but I don’t use item name, just code and description.
Is this possible?

What keywords are in description that you are looking for? Put those keywords into Item Name field.

If description is what you need to identify an item, then description of each inventory item would have to be shown on inventory reports too. This would make reports much more difficult to read due to so much text that would span multiple lines.

Much better alternative is to name your inventory items in creative way so the names are as short as possible for you to tell among each other. This way they will be easy to select from drop-down and your inventory reports will be compact.

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@itmoto I have just spent some time today changing the Purchase Invoice Items and Sales Invoice Items to use the Code Column and I have changed the text in the name fields to be short descriptive content. I will be doing the inventory items tomorrow but I am busy optimising my income and expense accounts for end of year return.

While I would prefer to separate the name and description fields for client views, I do understand where Lubos is coming from with regards to reports views and also negating the need to have two fields visible in order to see which product is which in drop down and actually I did not need that much text in the name field when I started looking into it.

So we are NOT going to change the workflow anymore as I am not going to redo this work that I am doing today and tomorrow again!

@lubos I would recommend that you create a sample entry for new users in Manager using inventory items and purchase/sales invoice items to prevent people like myself and the other people commenting on this post from doing this differently from the way that you have designed the program to work.

I can see your point about reports getting a little lengthy.
I have over 700 items now and adding an individual name to each one would be a nightmare, especially seeing that the data is already there in the description field that could be viewable.
I regularly import 20 new parts at a time from supplier parts lists (as parts get superseded every few years) and I just wouldn’t get the time to re-create a special name for each item.

Currently when choose inventory item account, I start typing the description e.g. Air filter GSXR1000 would type ‘air’ then have to guess the item code. If I get the text string slightly wrong nothing comes up.

Was just hoping to see description some how even if it’s just a small part of it.

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You could use Batch update to update inventory item names in batch rather than one by one.

See: Manager Cloud

But how could I batch update 700 with no names entered (I have never used the name field) are you saying copying the description to the name field?

It’s much faster to edit your data if it’s in spreadsheet. Then you can import spreadsheet back into Manager.

For example, if you want to copy descriptions into name field you can literally just copy and paste 700 cells from one column to another. But as I pointed out previously, descriptions can get quite long and it’s better to come up with some more compact naming scheme for your inventory items.

I guess I am quite lucky my descriptions aren’t too long.
Will copy and paste a few descriptions to name fields to see how it looks in reports and to see how it works out.

Houston we have a problem! Is there any way to batch update the fields of invoices created prior to changing the field names, without changing the prices which will have changed over time? I have just realised that in trying to do some reports, the reports are showing the text as it was before I modified the field names.

I probably have to go to each invoice and change the text manually by copying and paste, but I thought that I would check here first! In principal I agree one should not change the text of past invoices (bad practice in general), but in this specific instance it would be helpful.

@lubos I have the latest version of Manager and I have just noticed that Manager is not pulling the code info from Sales Invoice Items for the sales invoice Form - its pulling it from the name field. It is however pulling the code from the code field for Inventory Items.

Also on the purchase order form and Purchase invoice forms its showing blank for the code fields for purchase invoice items despite there being text in that field for those invoice items!

Why is this different from what Dietmar is experiencing? I have version 16.3.26. Something is not quite right here.

agree with the comments