Okay, I’ve searched the forum here and discovered I can start fresh for the new year by setting a new date in the Summary page. But I would also like to see just the current year’s Sales Invoices, Expenses, etc. on those pages. Right now, those pages show all existing Invoices and expenses. It would be nice to clear the totals to zero and start the new year fresh.
That would be an accounting disaster. Manager needs all that information to know how you got to wherever you are. The financial history of a business does not vanish with the start of a new accounting period. Suppose there is a question or a dispute? How would you resolve it? More importantly, how would you know your ongoing liabilities or value your assets?
Income and expense accounts will be effectively reset to zero once you enter the new date. Old-fashioned accounting required temporary summary accounts and closing entries to empty those accounts. Manager just needs a date reset.
Asset, liability, and equity accounts are permanent, however. Their balances carry over to the new accounting period.
It is fair to say there never is a fresh start. We are always dependent financially on every action and decision that came before.
Thank you for the quick reply. I guess I should have been more clear. I realize it can’t totally ignore that previous information. I was just hoping it could display only the current year’s information, just as it does in the Summary page.
To do what you outline would require Manger to display by selectable date range.
Let say that after setting new date you only wanted to see the P&L transaction since that date, the default display could be “Current Year”, if you wanted to see last year then you could select “Previous Year”, other choices could be “All” - since the start or “Custom” where a date range could be entered.
I have not used Manager for the full year yet. I will be starting a new year in April so I am not familiar with the process.
However, I was under the impression that accounting packages by default hide the previous years transactions in purchase invoices and sales invoices. To me that only seems logical to do it that way! Maybe its not a standard feature in accounting programs, but I wonder if it should be?
Why do you want to hide purchase invoices and sales invoices from previous periods? I mean they might still be unpaid after all therefore relevant in current period.
Also, all invoices under tabs are sorted by date in descending order so they will be pretty much pushed out of the view.
With regards to the P&L Income / Expenses accounts its much cleaner to only see the current year’s info.
When you drill down to review a current year P&L balance, you only want to see the relevant data to that balance, the display of any past year’s data just confuses that analysis
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As to unpaid purchase/sales invoices, that’s what the account payable/receivable are for,
With regards to the BS its less critical. but it still would be nice to only see current year
In relation to my previous post to this topic - some programs go over the top with their options
And the right hand scroll is still at the top
I think its more about removing clutter. Generally speaking if you want to find say a sales invoice for a client, it would be helpful to specify whether the invoice is in the current year or the previous year etc. Most of the time, you only really want information for the current year, you don’t want to view sales invoices etc going back 10 years, but obviously you do want to be able to view previous years!
Just enter the year in the Search field and you have what you want. Or enter the customer’s name. Or, for example, if the customer needs another copy of your invoice on the Acme project, enter Acme and there it will be (assuming you entered Acme in your invoice summary).
It seems to me you would normally be looking at the sales invoice list only to find an invoice. In that case, you would want access to all invoices, not just the current year’s. And then a simple search gets you to where you need to be.
Thank you all for the replies. As it happens, all last years invoices have been paid in full, so that’s why I was wondering about viewing only the current year’s info. Actually, I have less of an issue seeing older invoices. I thought it was going to be more confusing when it comes to this year’s expenses, but I think Tut came up with my answer with the Search field. I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t even noticed that there.
That should allow me to do what I want to. Thanks.
@Tut I was just using that as an example off the top of my head. To be honest, I have not given the matter much thought as I am still in my first year of accounting with Manager. The point that I and the OP was making is that generally speaking people only want to see records from the current financial year. In the main, you don’t very often want to see records from previous financial years. So its more about only showing information that is relevant i.e. current. Having said that, its too soon for me to say what would work besk for me as I need a couple of years records in Manager to see how I end up using records from previous years.