I am getting really tired of this system to be honest, i made it very functional for the company that uses this and yes we are paying them as well for the cloud version but payment is not an issue here, the issue is that we don’t have an option not to make some adjustments that is happening to all users in general… For example some users who are in another part of the world would think an adjustment would benefit them then they contact or suggest it, the adjustment will be done and will affect all the users around the world without anyone knowing about it beforehand or having an option not to go with it, (some will find it useful and some will make their jobs harder or messed up their data ), this is very annoying, it would have been better if they could build us a system as we please without being lumped into others (for extra fees we wouldn’t mind at all) @lubos , fix this please and we have sent you an email regarding this change, it has missed up our P&L, Inventory, BS(added Negative Inventory Clearing) which is not reasonable, for all the periods.
Same here. It’s not the first time and it feels like we are working with an ever Beta version. The problem is that even locked periods got affected, and we have been using manager for years. Right now we are looking for alternatives, especially since a new fiscal year is starting soon.
And that is a huge problem, i would’ve just reversed the Negative Inventory Clearing with a journal on the current period but it affects the cost and P&L of previous periods that makes it frustrating. We are working on the replacement as well, and we don’t use this kind of a system unless its a small or a start-up company. The company that uses this got a bit comfortable using this system as i made it easier and user friendly for them specially with custom reports and exported excel queries which they removed this past week, and now its getting really unhelpful.
Same problem here. A cloud customer contacted us yesterday and complained bitterly about changes in their prior-year figures due to the negative inventory clearing account. I’ve requested access to their books but haven’t received it yet. About six prior-year balances appear to have been altered, and these were financial statements already filed for tax and other statutory purposes. Has anyone else experienced similar issues? They are refusing journal entries to resolve it; they believe solution should come from NGSoftware.
I have to agree with the group here. There have been several sinificant gotcha updates in the years I have been using manager, a few that come to mind - change of mass upate format from rows to multiple columns on the same line (aargh), loss of transaction based average cost inventory valuation calculations (very difficult to tell a client that which was automatic is no longer) and now this one.
When I started using manager years ago it was just my own stuff on the desktop version. I liked it so much that I wanted to use it to keep the books for several organizations I am involved with and a couple of clients I keep the accounting for. I subscribed to the cloud version with that intent a year ago, but in the end becuase of the unknown ‘upgrade’ (well change) impacts I couldn’t work up the nerve to put anyone elses accounting records onto it. I want to, I really much prefer Manager to QB or most any other package - but I can’t take the risk with other peoples data.
@lubos I think many of us would feel better if we had a clear understanding of (i) whether there is a beta user program giving input/voting before changes are made, (ii) what the testing prgram is to really assess impact of upcoming changes before the are made.
At times it feels like there are more tweaks and revisions to functionality that is working well (from a user viewpoint) than there are to finishing some things that were started (portals for example).
I do love Manager. I do just want to feel more confident and comfortable putting peoples data into it. @lubos please help us all get comfortable again.
OK I ran the “Inventory Cost Correction” Process and it created the changes mentioned by all in this post including the negative value etc. So I checked in the Manger History to see what the effect the Inventory cost correction had on the history and with filtering found 6 pages of adjustments made at the specific time the correction was launched.
Interestingly I selected one entry to undo and once reversed I found that all the six pages of the correction entries were undone. This returned the p&l to the status before the Inventory Cost Correction was carried out,
The thing that surprised me was one undo reversed all which was great.
Just wondering for those then who are struggling with this change to perhaps try the same and carry out the undo in the same way?
I suggest before changing anything or upgraded the version it will be announce 2 days and list all the changes and real possible results, cos unannounced changes could damage years of closed accounts. this way users will have to decide if they stay old version or update it.
or The users should not update into new version.. so the integrated records will still be intact.
I haven’t had the real problem now cos i didn’t have yet my 1 year, but I will opt to not update my version regularly without seeing the benefit of doing it.
Using the cloud version, there’s no choice, updates are just implemented automatically. For us it meant years of closed accounting periods got affected.
Thank you for that. I know we will all work though it. However, if there are required ‘post update’ user actions and reconciliations the processes and steps need to be tested, explained and published ahead of the updates to eliminate ‘surprises’.
I think this is the recurring theme. It’s not at all that there can’t be changes and updates, there have to be, I get that, but they shouldn’t requiring a scramble by users to figure it out and resolve after the fact.
An Idea - Now that we have gone from an automatci transaction cost update system back to more of a batch system (via the cost correction form) cost update. Could we maybe get a + flag on the inventory tab and a highlighted header bar similar to recurring transcations to notify us that there are inventory cost corrections required e.g.
The above is from inter-account transfers but you get the idea, the highlight bar would take us to the cost correction form.
Right now cost corrections and the need to look at them are pretty hidden in the settings area.
Thanks for considering.
My goal is to make Manager super stable when it comes to upgrades so it can continue being improved for decades to come.
For example, the custom themes have been already rewritten to make them immune to future upgrades.
Inventory Unit Costs have been added so that cost calculations are stored in the database rather than recalculated on demand (which means even if calculation method is improved in the future, the historical figures won’t change).
As for Negative Inventory Clearing, when users contact me about this account being inflated, after reviewing their books, I see bookkeeping errors which resulted in negative inventory. This means it’s good to have this account on balance sheet because system makes it obvious there is an issue rather than burying the issue deeper in the books and make everything look okay on the surface.
Is it frustrating? Yes however I see this is a shared responsibility issue. I’ve implemented inventory the wrong way in the beginning. And businesses have made bookkeeping errors.
I’m happy to review everyone’s business to see who is affected.
They need to enter appropriate journal entries. I know it seems unprofessional to ask them to do it manually but this is really one-time event. New inventory model is storing pre-calculated inventory costs in the database so in the future their figures are guaranteed not to change in locked period. That’s one of the reason I needed to make this painful transition. Better sooner with less affected businesses than later with more.
This is actually supported again and much better because it handles all the edge-cases I’m aware of. Previously this feature was struggling in negative inventory situations and complex production order scenarios.
Thank you lubos. I think at the end of the day, what many of us are saying is not that the purpose or the changes made themselves are bad, rather that simply they need robust testing for ‘side-effects; before being put into production on the cloud and that we as users need an opportunity to understand what if any post update steps and/or reconciliations we may need to perform. Currently it feels as though we often have to scramble after the fact to figure out what the heck happened. That’s all - How do we please work together to minimize the surprise. Many of us have other peoples data in the system, have published financials for closed periods. We want to be excited about forthcoming updates not nervous of them. Thank you for listening and thank you for the wonderful platform that is manager.
@alasdair with inventory, inventory unit costs have been in Manager for many months and businesses have been slowly transitioning. But I did have to pull the trigger on the old method eventually. The complain here is not that inventory cost correction is calculating figures incorrectly, it’s that inventory cost correction is calculating figures differently in negative inventory situations.
For businesses without negative inventory, the figures will be almost exactly the same (there can be non-material rounding discrepancy difference at most).
What is really happening in many cases is that even businesses who don’t run negative inventory got themselves into negative inventory situations due to bookkeeping errors and new approach is kind of making it more obvious.
There is also segment of businesses which have very complex production order scenarios where the old method was calculating costs wrong. New method is calculating it correctly.
Either way, this is not an excuse for figures changing. Going forward, inventory unit cost calculations are stored in the database and are static. This will guarantee inventory figures won’t change after this transition. It’s once-off painful transition for affected businesses but it will yield benefits in the future.
It’s true that we had number of these painful transitions in the past 2 years. There is one transition and that will be going from automatic credit allocation to semi-automatic credit allocation. Luckily, this will have no effect on financial statements on accrual basis. After this, I’m done with changes because there is nothing else which needs to be rectified. I can start focusing on ideas again which do not break existing functions.
We are happy with this update. The only one thing all of us are talking about is locked accounting periods. Nobody want to do “recalculations” and additional journal entries in past accounting periods, because it would affect discrepancies in general ledger and hours of not necessary work.
My solution for this business year was moving to offline version 25.10.23.3022. If there would be no safe migration from 3022 to newer version into cloud till January 2026, unfortunately I’ll have to stop using manager and should move to another software.
@Aryan_Mohammed Same here. The Recalculate feature messes up all the previous years’ figures.
Please tell us how to fix this? What sort of errors are we making?
I have just seen the negative inventory clearing account in my summary, and like Vderbrist comment it has changed a closed audited period. Now Manager IO does not agree with my audited accounts. Accounts have been filed with the company registration office, tax has been paid on the profit and my year end to Feb 25 is CLOSED. Locked period should be locked we must keep accounts for 7 years any external audit by revenue needs to match filed/published accounts closed periods cannot be fluid. How am I going to reconcile my closed period with new figures to what we have filed. A locked unchangeable period is fundamental to accounting.
Click on the negative inventory clearing and at the bottom of the page create a new journal entry.
Do make a backup before doing anything to closed periods.
I clicked negative inventory clearing and the new journal but it didn’t restore the figures.
I wonder is this because we have been trying to correct negative stock ourselves as some coding of stock is wrong??
Then your issue might not be related to the negative inventory clearing account as negative inventory clearing account is just isolating the negative balance amount of inventory items that were previously automatically posted to Inventory-cost account and that’s what the journal entry would do. So, if that doesn’t correct your figures then your issue might be different and maybe its related to the new recalculation method which might be calculating inventory cost figures differently than how it was done before but that change was done almost an year ago so not sure why your noticed that just now.