I’ve been thinking that may be nice to have some predefined defaults in the summary. Actually we can specify “from” and “until” dates:
But what if we could have some predefined periods of time like:
Last month
Last quarter
Last Year
All time
It will save a few seconds, but few seconds many times plus many people will worth. Don’t you think?
Also, I think this setting should be by User, not by the company.
I have seen that my accountant set a period of time and if I want to see some different period I have to wait he finish his work in order to set another period.
How do you envision this working? If you select “Last Month” on January 31, what happens on February 1? And if you select “Last Quarter” on July 15, do you get May through June, or May 15 through July 15? And what about businesses who define financial periods that don’t match calendar months or quarters, but end after a designated number of weeks? Likewise, what does “Last Year” mean? Does it mean the last calendar year, fiscal year, or previous 365 days? Maybe the ability to define specific date ranges isn’t such a bad idea.
What about someone who as half year fiscal period? I think that you should consider also quarters and semesters. There are so many cases that make your request very difficult to be implemented
You could also set this up so each company can determine what they want as a month, quarter or year in a setup file which would then do the appropriate dates in various reports. And, of course, leave a custom option for those odd times you need something really different but only once in a while.
That would be just one more thing to enter in a different place. And, if you wanted to change it, you’d have to go there to do it. What could be simpler than the current implementation? Enter the date range; it works under all circumstances and keeps the interface straightforward.
What could be simpler than the current implementation? Enter the date range; it works under all circumstances and keeps the interface straightforward.
The current implementation is fine. But, what if there is a way to save users time with date range presets?
Like I said before, my be you can’t please everyone. But if you can make this little difference may be good for more of your clients. How many clients do you think has for fiscal year the same calendar year?
Having some presets still will be straightforward. For those with different needs still can have the custom date ranges as we all have now.
Based on what rdavidsc was asking, you’d only have to set this once for your particular Fiscal year and you’d never have to deal with it again. It would be part of the initial setup of the company. You’d always have the month, quarter, year option there and the dates would be correct as you set them in the initial setup (if not on a Jan-Dec fiscal year). If the Custom option for the reports is left, then if something weird needed to be done, you still could.
Month ok - although some users might use financial month’s other than calendar months eg a month of 5 weeks, 4 weeks 4, weeks, etc or 13 x 4 reporting periods in a year so 1st day of calendar (ie Gregorian) month may not actually 1st day of their financial month
start/finish of Financial quarter
start/finish of Financial year
I could probably find more questions but that will do to start
I am not saying that such a choice wouldn’t be useful but it may not be as easy to setup as some of you think
May be is not that simple as we thought, but if you set at least the simplest periods of time you will be helping a lot. It can be just few presets, and then add more and more.
Following the 80/20 Pareto’s principle, with 20% of the features you may help to 80% of the people.
At the risk of repeating myself, the current implementation works for 100% of users and does not require making any other entries in Settings to specify the parameters of your business’ operating calendar.
Hi Tut… please, no offense, but… That what you just post is a square-mind thinking.
Of course current implementation works for 100% of the users… but what if we (I’m including myself because I love Manager) add some features to improve the software to many of those 100% users? Would worth to think about it?
@rdavidsc, my comments are based on the developer’s preference for resolving known bugs and adding new capabilities rather than tinkering with features that already work. He also prefers to minimize the need to set things up under Settings.
Yes, your suggestion would appeal to some users whose operating calendars match whatever options were included. But they would irritate other users with different desires, leading to demands for more and more options. Where would you stop?
None of these options would add actual functional utility to the program. By some standards, they would just add complexity because of the need to set calendar parameters for start date of the week, duration of the accounting month or period, beginning and end of the financial quarters and year, and so forth. It is fine for you to suggest that your parameters be included and others’ be left out. You probably think your ideas are fairly common. But providing what some users want and leaving others out will just generate complaints. So the complexity would need to be built in from the start.
There are more important issues to address that will benefit more or all users.
Actually, your accountant should be using the Reports tab, not hogging the Summary tab.
Report “view” would be equal to Summary “view”.
This way the accountant can take one week or three to complete their work without interfering with others. (In my business, that’s what I would be instructing the accountant to do)
Then how did the perfectly working accrual / cash basis process get stuffed up, which yourself have strongly protested against, if they weren’t tinkering…
There have been others, (versions of the Bank / Cash tabs), which may have resulted in benefits.
Besides, adding a few basic standard periods as suggested by @rdavidsc in post #4 actually fits into the current statement - , the periods being in a dropdown which includes “customise” for other non nominated periods.
That what’s described as “square-mind thinking”.
If “actual functional utility” is the benchmark, then how does adding debit / credit totals on Customer statements fit that criteria. Requested by ONE user and the other 99.999999% have to suffer the consequences. If the totals had been added to the bottom of the respective columns, then there would be at least some logic.
That’s the point no one is being left out - they will still have the full use of “the current implementation”, as currently used by the 100%.
, the periods being in a dropdown which includes “customise” for other non nominated periods.