Disable Projects

I have used Projects in the past but not anymore. I unchecked Projects but that changes nothing (i still can see, edit and create projects). How can i remove or disable Projects?

W11 - Desktop just updated to the latest version

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Remove Project from all transactions, then delete the project. Or create a new business.

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There are more than 6000 transactions. Should i remove them one by one?

How can i create a new business without losing all of my transactions?

Use Batch Update. Create a backup first. And try to first update 1 record. Once happy do them all. Please note that there may be interdependencies, so always first Batch edit Payments and Receipts, Followed by Invoices, etc.

That’s where i’m afraid of.

@lubos is there another way to disable Projects?

@Frankie

With small trick,
Back up your data, and try using old api or api2 to delete all projects on the Project Tab.
I’ve tried it and it should work.

How does this work?

Desktop W11

Use Api2

Create AccessToken and open

Get all Project UUID
POST: /projects

Delete all Project with UUID
DELETE: /project-form/{key}

Hi @lubos , will you consider to modify Manager, if possible, so that you can toggle Projects on and off simply by hiding the fields and tabs? That way you can switch back and more important it has the advantage that no workarounds need to be used, reducing the risk of corrupting the administration.

I would encourage you to try Batch Update as recommended earlier. You just have to select in a spreadsheet all the 6,000 entries under the Lines.1.Project column and then delete these.

You do this for every functional tab where projects exist. This is easy and quick. Just try it as suggested.

I tried that, with the result that my accounting was no longer correct. Batch editing for purchase invoices is also not possible at line level, so you have to do each line separately. I think you’ll agree that having the ability to toggle Projects on and off (show/hide) is a better option. But having said that, I don’t know if that is easy to implement, hence my question to @lubos

I’ve just tried it once again and i found that you have to remove al the entries under Lines.1.Project, Lines.2.Project etc. But again, the result was that my accounting was no longer correct.

Have you tried using api2 as I suggested?

I think this is safe and you don’t need to change existing transactions, even if someday you want to return to using Project. (you need to try it to make sure it is safe for you)

You can restore the Project that you have deleted back into the system, and your old transactions using the Project will return to normal.

Save the UUID and Project Name before you delete it, this data will be used to restore the deleted Project.

What would be incorrect? Show examples. Did you try to remove the Lines… column headings as well (maybe that helps).

Why do you even want to delete/deactivate the project? Why not just Inactivate the projects which are not operational?
Do you want the Project option to not appear in transactions?
If thats the case then i think for Project option in transaction to appear there must be at least one active project.

Good point. Didn’t think about that. However, I guess that @Frankie wants to retrospectively get rid off all the projects, i.e. not use them at all, not wanting to show any field up during item selection.

I agree with this, it could be a good solution for this case.
But Projects should still be displayed in the Edit Form for Transactions that already use Projects.

Yes only for lines for which Project is already selected.
2

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I think @Frankie has a good point here. What if a user tested out a tab for a while and then found an alternative workflow. They should in theory be able to deactivate the tab and get rid of the overhead.

The problem arises since referential integrity is preserved and you cannot delete used Projects. I remember a time when doing that was possible for supplementary tabs like Projects but I cannot recall why this was changed.

Anyway, you can easily unlink any related transactions when deleting a single Project but when Batch deleting this will not work.

Disabling tabs is a more nuanced issue as different tabs require different disabling workflow if this is to be automated. Therefore, I think that the following options may be suitable here:

  • providing users with assistance in unlinking transactions

  • allowing the users to hide nonessential/supplementary tabs like Projects is preferred.

Also, once the new Find & recode feature is implemented, unlinking projects from Transactions screen and then batch deleting them would be a trivial task.

Either way, I will place this under ideas.

The solution is to be able to find & recode individual transaction lines across all tabs.

So you could use advanced query to filter out lines where project is not empty, then set project to be empty in bulk.

We already have advanced query and ability to see which transaction lines have project set. What we don’t have is ability to recode single field in bulk.

Yes, you can use Batch Update but it would be better if this could be done within the program.

Another thing I’m pursuing is ability to purge historical data. So for example, if you are purging transactions more than 5 years old, then that would also clear out tabs that haven’t been used for long time.

So eventually this will be solved one way or another.

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