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