Batch Receipts and Payments with Multiple Lines and Inventory

[Indinfer]

Looks like there is already a way to batch create many receipts and payments that have multiple lines and having inventory items.

One thing that is difficult is that columns show keys for Bank.Account and Lines.Item. I have not tried a batch create yet for Receipts and Payments, but I presume you need to enter the correct bank account key instead of the text for the bank account name.

What I do know is that the batch update shows the keys for Bank.Account and Lines.Item. And that is already difficult. What I wish is that Manager would translate the keys into readable strings. And I wish I could batch create supplying the name of the bank account instead of the key for the bank account.

When I paste back into Manager, Manager would reject any name for which it does not have a key, and would let me know that I entered the name wrong.

I’m looking at what I pasted in Excel from Batch Update. Looks like multiple lines in an entry are handled with multiple lines inside the cells for Lines.Account, Lines.Qty, Lines.Item, and Lines.Amount. And you don’t use both Lines.Account and Lines.Item on the same line. One of them has to be a blank line.

In Excel, one way to get multiple lines in a cell is to hold down the Alt key while pressing Enter. So, that is fine. In my text editor, I see that you can type a double quote, then put each line data on a separate line, then end with a double quote. Then, I can copy and paste into an Excel spreadsheet cell and I have multiple line entry. So, that is all fine.

If is not this way already, I hope that (I guess Lubos does the programming?) Lubos will make Batch Create to accept the bank account name and item name, and so on for all the fields, instead of needing to enter the key for the bank account. And Batch Update will show the account names instead of the account keys, etc.

I would guess that my request is already being worked on, even before I thought to post. I just need to be patient, right?

For tonight, I think I will just use the wonderful receipts and payments forms. After all, I find them so very well designed.

[lubos]

@Indinfer

I presume you need to enter the correct bank account key instead of the text for the bank account name.

Currently this is the case but the feature is going to be improved so in future, it will show names rather than GUIDs.

@Indinfer

I’m looking at what I pasted in Excel from Batch Update. Looks like multiple lines in an entry are handled with multiple lines inside the cells for Lines.Account, Lines.Qty, Lines.Item, and Lines.Amount. And you don’t use both Lines.Account and Lines.Item on the same line. One of them has to be a blank line.

That’s partially correct. If you use Item, then Manager will ignore Account because it will deduct the account from item. In other words, you can specify Item & Account but if you do this, account will be ignored.

@Indinfer

If is not this way already, I hope that (I guess Lubos does the programming?) Lubos will make Batch Create to accept the bank account name and item name, and so on for all the fields, instead of needing to enter the key for the bank account. And Batch Update will show the account names instead of the account keys, etc.

This is the plan. I do want to make batch operations user-friendly.

GUIDs are not the only ugliness. I’d like column names to reflect language user is using, then only show columns which are actually relevant to make the feature feel more natural.

[Indinfer]

I appreciate your posting these details of what’s coming in Manager.

[Indinfer]

I just did a batch entry in Manager’s present version. It worked flawlessly.

Goes without saying that I did a Manager backup in case anything went wrong.

I had a lot of transactions to enter. So, I invoked the batch create at the bottom of Receipts and Payments. I copied and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet.

To get the GUIDs, I invoked the batch update at the bottom of Receipts and Payments. I copied and pasted into another Excel spreadsheet. I used the date and amount to identify a previously entered transaction that is approximately what I want to batch-enter. I copied the line except for the key column. I pasted into the batch create spreadsheet. Notice that the batch create has no key column, and should have no key column. I changed the amounts, contacts, and any other information I desired. I left the account GUIDs.

Then I copied and pasted into Manager for Batch Create and finished the process. I checked all the batch-entered transactions and they are correct.

Flawless! Thank you, Lubos!

This might not be for the faint of heart, at least not yet. Having some knowledge of programming may have helped me to guess what to do with the GUIDs and so forth. Seems to me anyone could try to do what I did as long as they also make a backup as I did.

If anything goes wrong, you can get back to where you were by adding (importing) a new business from the backup. Then remove the corrupted business and rename the imported business.

So, if you have a lot of transactions to enter, batch entry is already possible in Manager.

[raj_nann]

@Indinfer

I changed the amounts, contacts, and any other information I desired. I left the account GUIDs.

so you dont have to use any GUID in batch create mode?

if u dont mention account , will all these new transactions will be in suspense account . Then later we need to adjust the account from manager ?

[Tut]

You misunderstood the point of @Indinfer’s explanation, @raj_nann. The post describes a way to decipher the hexadecimal GUIDs, using a “batch update” spreadsheet, in order to build a “batch create” spreadsheet. It says nothing about not using GUIDs. It tells you how to identify them so you can use them.

[raj_nann]

ok understood