Difficulty importing Sales Invoices via Batch Create (Customer, Account, Tax Code issues)

1

Hi all,

I’m in the process of migrating from Reckon to Manager Desktop (version 26.3.31) and am trying to import historical data.

I’ve successfully imported my customers and chart of accounts, and I’m now working on importing opening balance invoices only (simple, single-line invoices to establish Accounts Receivable balances at the start of the year).

I have not yet attempted to import full multi-line invoices for the tax year — this is just the initial opening balance step.

What I’m seeing:

  • Using a standard column format such as:

    Date | Customer | Reference | Description | Account | Amount | Tax Code

    the Customer field remains blank unless I use the internal UUID instead of the customer name.

  • Even when I get Customer working (via UUID), the following fields do not import:

    • Account

    • Tax Code

    • Qty

    • Unit Price

  • Only these fields seem to reliably import:

    • Date

    • Customer

    • Reference

    • Description

    • Amount

  • When I try to use Batch Update afterwards, I don’t see Account or Tax Code available to edit — they only appear when editing each invoice individually.

  • I also tried structured (multi-line) formats, but that resulted in multiple incorrect invoices being created.

What I’m trying to achieve:

  • Import simple opening balance invoices (one line each)

  • Assign them to the correct customer

  • Allocate to the correct income account

  • Apply GST correctly

Questions:

  1. Is there a supported way in Desktop to import invoices with Account and Tax Code populated, even for simple single-line invoices?

  2. Should Customer be entered by name or UUID when using Batch Create?

  3. Is Batch Create intentionally limited to header-level fields only?

  4. Is there a recommended workflow for importing opening balance invoices without needing to edit each one individually?

I’m very happy to follow the intended workflow — I just want to make sure I’m approaching this correctly before proceeding further.

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

2

Hello @DavidG,

Welcome to the forum.

All the fields that you need do work with Batch Operations, however, it take a little getting used to.

My advise to new users is to:

  1. Create a single test record with all required fields manually.

  2. Use Batch Update > Copy to Clipboard to get the structure of batch data

  3. Based on the structure from point 2 you can easily Batch Create

Another point worth mentioning is that, in addition to UUIDS, you can also substitute that for Code/Reference of the referred account/transaction. This will work provided that the Codes/References used are unique.

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3

Thanks for the guidance provided.

I followed the suggested process without success:

  1. Created a test Sales Invoice manually with all required fields, including multiple line items, accounts, quantities, unit prices, and GST.

  2. Went to Sales Invoices → Batch Update → Copy to Clipboard.

  3. Pasted the result into Excel to use as the template for Batch Create.

What I found:

The exported structure only contains:

Issue date | Reference | Customer | Description | Invoice Amount | Balance due | Status

It does not include any line-level fields such as:

  • Account

  • Qty

  • Unit Price

  • Tax Code

Result:

I do not have a template that includes line-item fields, so I cannot construct a multi-line invoice import using Batch Create.

What I need to know:

  • How do I access or generate a Batch Update structure that includes line-level fields?

  • If that is not possible, is multi-line invoice import supported in Desktop via Batch Create?

Thanks for your help.

4

What version of Manager are you using?

5

Version 26.3.31
Downloaded Yesterday.

I have to leave for about 12 hours but will be back.

6

The version is not the latest but it’s recent.

But having read through your post for the second time, I now understand what went wrong here:

That’s because you did not actually reach the batch update screen. The giveaway was the presence of Balance due and Status columns in your copied data, which aren’t data columns but rather calculated columns which have no business in batch operations.

To do a batch update:

  1. Click on Batch Operations > Batch update

    Screenshot_20260405_180312
    Screenshot_20260405_180312496×813 69.8 KB

  2. This will take you to a selection screen where you then select the records you want to updateand click Batch Update action button

    Screenshot_20260405_180513
    Screenshot_20260405_1805131080×1069 101 KB

  3. Then you will be taken to the actual Batch Update screen. Here you need to click Copy to Clipboard and this will give you the structure you need to follow

    Screenshot_20260405_181118
    Screenshot_20260405_1811181080×907 83.4 KB

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7

Thank You,

That helped me enourmously.

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