I have been using Manager since 2015 and this is the first time I ever actually used the Batch update. So I appreciate that I may not have done things correctly.
My purpose of the batch update was to move all my clients/suppliers from the “other” field on the payments/receipts form to the customer/supplier fields.
I have picked up what may be a legacy configuration/bug in some of my entries when doing the batch import back into the program.
I only changed the contacts column, PayerPayeeType and the Customer Supplier columns.
I did not make any entries in the date or the invoice amount entries in Excel.
Yet when I imported the excel spreadsheet back into Manager, some of the dates and invoice amounts formats were “changed” and Manager updated them. The dates that were changed were in the format 4-dec-2020 and changed to 04-dec-2020. Some of the dates were already in format 04-dec-2020.
The invoice amount fields that were changed were from 50.4 to 50.40 or 50 to 50.00. So basically the program changed the invoice amounts to 2 decimals.
I don’t have a problem with the changes and in fact the import fixed inconsistencies that were present before the import. However, as I did not change the date and invoice amounts, I feel that there is an issue with this being changed on import. I made no changes to these columns.
Secondly, it is clear that some invoice amounts are/were showing as 50 and others are showing as 50.00. I would recommend sticking with 2 decimals and forcing all amounts to use this format regardless of whether the user puts in 50 or 50.00 - the program should save as 50.00.
Thirdly, the date also seems to vary from 4-Dec-2020 to 04-dec-2020. So the program is not saving the date consistently.
While I have put this in one topic, it is clear that the first point is related to the Batch update, whereas the second and third point is more to do with how the program saves data when entered by the user. None of this is an issue as far as I can see, but I just thought that I would raise the issue as there are inconsistencies. This was on the latest version of Server and desktop versions.
The changes you are describing are likely to be changes made by the spreadsheet program you have chosen to use.
In some spreadsheet program you can choose the format of each column when it is imported. In “LibreOffice Calc” importing date columns as General instead of a date specification means dates are imported as text and not changed by the spread sheet program (but also mean sorts are text not date sorts on that column).
However the bottom line is, I agree batch updates can produce unexpected results due to interaction between Manager data encoding and a users spreadsheet data encoding.
No I don’t think it’s excel because it would change all the dates and invoice amounts as the entire column would have the same format eg General. It is just odd ones that are different going down the column, although there are a higher percentage of old transactions that seem to have the same date format.
I am not worried about it, I just thought that I would mention it to the developer so that he was aware.
Perhaps I have misunderstood what you are describing.
Are you saying
when doing a batch update
Some transaction lines use an (old) format
The text in the file you are reimporting does not contain an update to this format
On batch update import, Manager updates the format, and reports the format changes in Managers history.
If so what is ideal behaviour is not obvious.
History is reporting a real change to Managers database.
By recording all changes, all changes could be reversed by undo. Such an undo function could undo Manager program updates which a user later found were undesirable.
a consequence of this depth of history is it will contain changes by both the user and Manager program updates.
If this is what is occurring, perhaps an improvement would be to distinguish between user an program update changes, perhaps by a different highlighting.
What I am saying is that I will click on batch update - copy to clipboard and save to excel. Then assuming I change absolutely nothing, copy contents of excel and paste into the batch update box and click update or save or whatever.
Some of the dates, but not all will have changed. The first five for example will be unchanged, the next three will be changed, the next one will be unchanged and the next one will be changed etc. No rhyme or reason. Same for invoice amounts.
When importing back into Manager, the format is being changed from 4-dec-2020 to 04-dec-2020. This implies that the copy to clipboard is saving everything in the 04-dec-2020 format and that Manager has some of these dates as 4-dec-2020. So on import, the dates are changed.
So this is not a batch update issue per se. Manager itself (before the batch update) has dates in both formats.
when batch exporting it exports the current stored text.
when importing it converts dates to it’s (current) internal text format.
some details of the internal format have changed (as you have identified).
As a result a batch update when
a user updates old Manager data
copies to clipboard
paste back into Manager without editing the chipboard
would update Manager’s internal representation, so show changes in Manager’s history
Btw I have not fully tested this but it is consistent with my memory when doing batch updates and looking at the changes documented in Manager’s history
It is also consistent with my experience. @dalacor, it is important that what you described did not actually include changes to amounts or dates, but only to formats. Please correct me if my reading of your posts is wrong. I also noted that you experienced more changes with older transactions, an observation consistent with internal formatting practices having evolved over time.
Correct. No amounts or dates were changed. Simply the format.
This is not an issue (in my opinion) with batch updates, but more on why Manager is not updating the format of things like dates, amounts etc when the program changes. It is very inconsistent over the years. While there are more entries in the older dates, there are quite a number in recent years. I wonder if this is as result of cloning invoices etc which would explain why I am seeing date differences even for this year.
Not a huge issue, but interesting non the less. Probably something that could be fixed in the future as this would reduce the number of “changes” in the batch update.