Would it be possible to autofill (but give people the ability to overwrite with their own text) the following fields.
When I create a purchase invoice or sales invoice, I put in information in the description field and I put in the invoice number. When I go to pay or receive money I have to put in the invoice number again and I have to put in the information in the description field again.
Maybe some people use different text in those two fields for invoices and on receive/pay forms, but you could have the autofill with the option to overwrite as you do in other areas of the program.
I have just been putting in the description field whatever I put in on the invoice description field. I guess that I just thought that it would make it easier for me to find the received/payment for any given invoice if the description field in the invoice and in receive/pay is identical.
Is this not what the description field for the receive/pay invoice is meant to be used for? What should I be putting in the description field if not whats on the invoice description field?
Personally, when I receive a payment against a sales invoice, I enter into the Description box something like: “Check #2554 in payment of Invoice 10302.” My thinking is that, if I want to know what that payment was for, such a description fills most needs without having to open the actual receipt.
The list of payments in the Bank Accounts tab already shows the transaction was allocated to “Accounts receivable - Customer Name Invoice #,” so the only extra information I am providing is really the form of payment. Having said that, I have never, in all my years, had to recover that bit of information, so I’m not sure why I bother, except innate thoroughness.
After thinking about this for a few hours, I think the autofill would actually be detrimental for many users. While some may do what @dalacor and @patchworkfields describe, I would bet many others do something else and would find autofilled entries a nuisance. I note that generally speaking, the only places autofill is used in Manager is where the content is fairly obvious, such as when Narration in a journal entry carries down to the individual debit and credit lines.
Wouldn’t it be easier to use same text as in on sales/purchase invoice description to find the receipt/payment? I have never recorded the cheque numbers, but then my clients use purchase orders which is recorded on the sales invoice. I actually put that in the reference on the received money - but I still have to enter that manually.
What the program could do perhaps is have a conditional statement. So if purchase order number exists on sales invoice use that as the receive reference other leave blank as people like you will use the cheque number. I am not sure what else you can use for the receive reference other than client purchase order number or their cheque number. But if you have a client purchase order number, this is by far better!
With payments, it gets a bit tricky, because I don’t use the reference number for the suppliers invoice number. I prefer to create a sequential invoice number and at the moment I am putting the suppliers invoice number in the internal infromation field. I know most people prefer to use the purchase invoice ref for the suppliers invoice number, but I just find it easier to have sequential purchase invoice numbers for filing purposes. I can live with that.
Putting in cheque xys in payment of invoice abc, does not help me to find the payment/receipt as quickly as if I had laptop and projector for Client A on both the invoice description and payment/receipt description. Its much easier to find it my way, especially as the only way to match the cheque number would be to your files. Where else is the cheque number recorded in the program.
I can see your point about you doing different things with it. I wonder if its possible to set autofill in the settings in Manager so that you can autofill what you want, or enable autofill for fields a and b if you want to enable it, so that the program is versatile for different ways of using the program, because nobody does things the same way…
I am not sure how many people work the same way me and patchworkfields do, but I am sure that we are not the only ones.
We’ve read other users’ insistence on sequential numbering of various things, or some have mentioned bank transaction numbers. My concern is that anything as a default will useful for some but a hindrance for others.
This is a very interesting idea. I could envision the ability to “map” any desired field as autofill contents. In that way, it would seem similar to setting default invoice notes. Of course, the implementation would obviously be much trickier.
I think this is becoming very complex which is something we do not need in Manager. I probably did not understand fully the initial request. Because many of my description details (and other fields) are the same I would like it to automatically show a list of previous entries for that field from which I could select the appropriate one needed.
Perhaps we should start with what exactly the description fields for receive/payment is meant to be used for in order to determine best use of the description fields. I personally would have thought having matching description fields in invoices and receive/payment would be the simplest way to track things down. But it is clear everyone is using it for different purposes. Perhaps some guidelines by the developer @lubos as to what the fields are meant to be used for would be helpful
Description field is just to provide extra information if needed. It’s definitely not a field that needs to be filled in.
If you are receiving money from customer, then you are allocating the money received to Customer credits or Accounts receivable account. There is really no point to enter into description field the same information which has been already conceived by categorizing transaction into right account.
If you leave description field empty, I’d rather make Manager smarter by simply generating description on demand based on what account the amount has been posted.
The question therefore is, what report or what screen are you looking at where having description like that would be useful to see.
In my case I use the description fields for all sorts of info, often repetitious, and would like it to show previous entries from which I could select the appropriate one. Just saves on typing time.
I think that this is the most relevant point. I need to decide what information would be most useful where I would see the description. Had not thought of reports. I would suggest leaving this issue unchanged for the moment as this requires mor thought and there are other outstanding issues that have a higher priority.
