There appears to be a programing code required to produce a Custom Report; is this available and if so is it simple enough for a simpleton like me?
Custom Reports is a work in progress. Documentation is virtually nonexistent. If you aren’t familiar with SQL queries, you probably won’t be able to figure it out. Based on topics on the forum, even those who are have trouble. No doubt it will improve in the future.
What information are you trying to obtain? There may be a way without a custom report.
It would useful to have the reference show on the GL Transactions report
What exactly is your desired use? Many entries have no reference number. For sales invoices, on the other hand, the invoice number already appears on the GL Transactions report.
The reason for considering a custom report is to get the Bank Accounts to reflect individual balances, and secondly to construct an Income Statement and Balance Sheet that suits the way I work.
The Cash Accounts tab shows statement balances, uncleared payments, and uncleared deposits, with the resulting net balance for all individual bank accounts you have created. What information do you want that is not there?
The Profit and Loss Statement (another name for income statement) is highly customizable through the Chart of Accounts settings, at least within the range of what actually constitutes a P&L. What are you trying to show that you haven’t been able to find a way to do?
Likewise, the Balance Sheet is highly customizable, especially after the recent introduction of custom control accounts. Again, what are you trying to show that you haven’t figured a way to do?
I am treasurer for a lifestyle village so all our transactions relate to bank entries and I put a cheque no or receipt no in the data entry so when I print it would be nice to see the reference
Regards
Trevor
Lubos or Tut,
I have been seeking Custom Reports for many months now. The Profit & LOss Statement can be manipulated a little bit with positioning of items but it does not reflect the Accounting Standards where the entity has a secondary source of income (sometimes called Extraordinary Income).
For the Debtors, I want to be able to create my own report that extracts pieces of information from Sales Invoices, Cash received and shows a balance at the beginning and end of year.
ie O/Bal Sales/receivable Paid C/Bal
Joe $ $ $ $
Blow
You
Me
…
Similarly for a Statement of Income & Expenditure or Receipts and Payments, I want to be able to put at the TOP of the report, the OPENING balance in Cash at Bank and after Income less Expenes generate the Closing balance.
Balance at bank at beg. of year $xxxx
Receipts:
…
…
…
Total receipts xxxx
Less: Payments
…
…
…
…
Total Payments xxxx
Operating SUrplus xxxx
Closing Balance xxxx
Can you help me design reports like these please?
It’s not a question of the information not being there, it is a question of the information being in the legally required format. Some improvement has been effected by re-categorising some of the Balance Sheet Accounts, but more needs to be done. Please advise me what custom control accounts are.
However, I would be reasonably happy if I could just get the Bank Accounts shown individually.
Read [16.5.32] Added ability to create custom control accounts for cash accounts - #15 by Tut. More documentation should be coming out shortly. This is a brand new feature.
I don’t understand your statement. You can certainly set up additional income accounts in your chart of accounts. Please clarify.
This is provided by the General Ledger Summary for balance sheet and income statement accounts. That report does not supply transaction details, however. Export those from the Cash Accounts tab by clicking on the bank account’s balance.
Manager provides accounting reports that have become standard literally over centuries of practice. Someone can always think of some new way to slice and dice data. That’s why the export feature is there. And custom reports will help.
Hello Tut,
I thank you for replying and sending that link to Custom Reports - which I will now try. I had been searching for instructions on how to setup custom reports and was at a loss. You are right, there are numerous ways of doing the same thing and basically, the structure of the standard reports is compliant with Accounting Standards. Because my organisation is not a listed company the stakeholders require specific things. so, I will give the link a try.
Ta.
MicheleA
Be forewarned, @MicheleA. As I said in my second post in this thread, documentation for custom reports is very limited so far. Unless you are an SQL wizard, I suspect you’ll get farther by manipulating spreadsheets. Or you can try educating your stakeholders to accept standard accounting practices. 
@MicheleA . Have you tried Cash Summary Report? You can get receipt and payments report there which you will export and make a little manipulation to get the receipt and payments report you wanted.
I also want to add that, we have to understand that an accounting software cannot do all reporting for the user. Some of the fact and figures you need will be some where in the system, you just have to fetch and make a report. People in various industries are all requesting for reports or formats that suits them. But of course there are some fundamental reports that Manager must have which I think Manager is doing well on.
The layout of the Profit and loss Statement that you have does not allow for Extraordinary Profits or Abnormal Income. But I have devised a new sequence in teh Chart of Accounts so that these sources of income are printed later after ORDINARY OPERATIONS. the problem is in the aggregation or subtotal from these income sources. as there is no way of report ing that.
The addition of the TRACKING CODE to your standard P&L report has resolved one huge problem I had in writing an event-specific report - why not add the Tracking Code function to ALL your reports to enable custom reports without SQL query knowledge - which doesn’t seem to work anyway, unless it’s just that I am unable to determine your Table & Column Names.
I would also like to see a method to alter the layout of your reports. Can you suggest a third-party software package that will do precisely that for your customised version of SQLite? I have tried several open source SQL query programs, which successfully open your .manager format files, but so far without success in interrogating them. PLEASE HELP WITH THIS VITAL FUNCTION!
PS: I am the Treasurer of & use your program for a charity’s accounts, & I love it - apart from the above, & the awful way it automatically allocates available funds to any outstanding invoices, even if they’re not paid yet - please make this an option to be disabled, as it was before!!!
Thank you for all your hard work. Happy New Year.
1 Like
This should not be a problem. Funds are allocated only when received/paid against the customer’s/supplier’s subaccount in Accounts receivable/payable. If the funds were designated for a specific invoice, that should have been selected when the transaction was entered. If not, why are the funds being received/paid? If they were not for an invoice, they should have been posted to some other account. If they were, money is fungible, so what difference does it make? If the funds are for some special purpose other than an invoice, the transaction should be posted to an advance payment/deposit account, either asset or liability, depending on which way the transaction is flowing.
When you enter the Receive Money you have two options (1) allocate to specific Invoices or (2) don’t allocate to specific invoices (oldest gets paid first, then next oldest etc). The following example demonstrates both
Firstly, please do not assume we are all brainless & do not know how to use your software.
You have obviously never had experience of Incomplete Accounts - this is where the client has provided little or no information, or disparate information going back years, where accounts have to be collated from various sources of information & data inputted correctly only when it comes to light, verifying its validity against what is known & applying it accordingly. Hence, aged invoices are inputted & payment applied WHEN the information confirming it is found.
Another scenario your software does not cater for is Payment on Account, where partial payment is applied to an invoice or invoices, which can then be reconciled against bank statements. Your automatic allocation of funds is a complete nonsense & is wholly unnecessary - when I allocate funds to an AR or AP invoice, that is a true reflection of the actual movement of money on any given date, which is what any accounting package should do - show where the money ACTUALLY is, not where you think it should be - ask any Accountant!
I am surprised that you have concentrated on this matter alone as it was a secondary issue in my post. You have not addressed the primary matter of your dire reporting functions. I was requesting that the Tracking Code be applied to all of your reports to make them more configurable (which worked well on a P&L Report), & asking if you can suggest a third-party solution to this.
As I said, I can access your modified SQLite database with various reporting programs, but not interrogate it to ascertain the precise Table & Column Names - but I strongly suspect that even if I were to guess these correctly, your Custom Report function would still not work!
I feel this is a matter that should be addressed urgently as people have been complaining about it for quite some time, as I know you are aware, & it is a vital accounting function to be able to correctly report financial affairs for any given period in any particular circumstance.
Although I have reservations about these two issues, I would add that your software is otherwise excellent & very pleasant to use. Addressing the reporting function & adding the ability to prevent automatic allocation of funds would make it perfect!
2 Likes
Dear Sir
You have absolutely no knowledge of my experience so I would strongly suggest that you should desist from casting dispersions on what you don’t know about other forum contributors.
My response above was based on that part of your post where I could assist based on your expressed concerns. The other parts of your post (tracking codes) requires a response from the programme developers and that is not I.
Yes it does, in fact you have the total control over both Accounts Receivables & Account Payables payment allocations. You can build up any fragmented documentation and match specific invoices & payments (and reconcile bank statements) or as you state “show where the money ACTUALLY is”.
In the instance that a piece of payment data is recorded prior to knowing the correct invoice allocation, then that payment is initially posted to an “Unallocated Payments” account. This is the exact same process used by forensic accounting teams when doing fraud and missing millions type of investigations and hence the elimination of automatic allocations.