IDEA: more changes in History tab & Lock date

1

Dear,

the history options is very use full but if we add one more column DATE of payment/ receipt/ invoices
Please check the below image for more understanding

Capture
Capture2228×1449 298 KB

as you can see on first line
actual purchase invoice date is 31st july 2020
but accountant edited it on 5th august 2020

If we can see when was the actual issue date of any transaction then we can compare with Timestamp column. in this way we can find out any mistakes going in our company.

In present situation we dont know which transaction they are editing ( are they editing recent transaction or previous month transaction?)

You will suggest me that i can use Lock date option from settings.
I use it to lock dates till 1st of previous month. so, accountant can add few suspense transactions of previous month.

You can ask me to reduced the lock date period too recent 7 days
I have up to 10 businesses and every day i cant goto settings on all 10 businesses and change the lock period .

Instead of we giving lock date manually every time, why cant there be option to have Unlock period.
EX: lets say i give Unlock period as 7 days

if today is Aug 5th then i can edit/ delete / create any transaction from 30 July to above
on next day which is Aug 6th, then im only allowed to do edit/ delete / create any transaction from 31st July to above

Final Note:

  1. Please add issue date in history column
  2. UnLock period instead of Lock Date or both options

Hope you understand my problem

Thank you
@lubos

2

Yes, you do. The reference number is right there in the Description column. The only reason this does not show for the top line in your screen shot is that the purchase invoice in question did not have a reference number. If it did, it would show.

This is not the intent of a lock date. The date should normally only change after management and/or accountant review at the end of an accounting period.

3

I know , this particular transaction does not have any reference.
Even though if reference is given , how will anyone know from which date that transaction is from ?

If someone edit any transaction of previous month that will be difficult to find out.

I just asked for a column to show issue date which can be useful

Next , about lock date
I understand that lock date purpose is to be used after the management review at the end of an accounting period

But, if we use unlock period as I mentioned which can update new lock dates automatically

First advantage is lock date keeps updating so our staff can’t edit any transaction before unlock period.

Second advantage will be if they want to edit or add or delete something they need to take permission from management so we will be aware of the situation.

And I’m not saying to remove lock date option

I’m just saying to add unlock period option on top of lock date.
So we can use any of those options depends on user requirements.

4

By looking at the transaction. I do not dispute your belief that the original date of a transaction might be useful to you. But someone else will say they want to examine actions for customers, another for suppliers, another for certain inventory items, someone else according to custom fields. Someone will want to look at invoice balances, someone will want to check tax codes when tracing a problem. On and on the list goes, but there is only so much space on the screen. Honestly, the best place to look for problems will never be the history file. After a problem has been identified, the history file can help you determine who is responsible for it. And it can help you undo it.

This is a contradiction: after management review and automatically. Your suggestion would result in locking records regardless of management review.

5

I can see value in functionality similar to what is being asked for but I suspect it maybe more complex than the above solution implies.

Suggestion: Have a search capability or report which displays all transactions which would have been prevented if a on a particular date, a specified lock date was set.

I think this implies showing transactions entered after a particular date, for a transaction applying before another date.

Use case:
Accounting information is often sent to another party or prior accounting periods data checked and “Locked”. In practice there are legitimate reasons to update data after it has been sent to a third party or the possibility data in a prior financial periods has been altered (for legitimate or illegitimate reasons).

Being able to display all such transactions would be useful.

6

@Patch
yes, if i can get search capability or report or just add issue date column on history that would be great.

Right now, Manager.io can display the following coloumns

  1. Timestamp
  2. User
  3. Description shows ( Type of transaction + reference number + Action taken like created/updated/deleted)
  4. Action is mentioned again

All the above details are the common details from any type of transaction

why cant we add another common detail which is issue Date ?

If its hard to give additional column for issue date , you can add it in Description column
For ex:
Suggested Description line: Purchase Invoices - Update “Purchase Invoice - # 9999” - 31/7/2020
This is Old Description line: Purchase Invoices - Update “Purchase Invoice - # 9999”

And

Yes, i agree with you. Regardless of management review im asking to lock the dates automatically. In this way i dont have to change lock period manually for all my businesses and i will have more control over my accountant and not letting him to edit previous month transactions.

Let me explain my main issue
in my case, there will be around 40 different types of transactions every day
lets say as per lock date i review all the accounts and lock the date by 31 july

Today is 6th aug, that means i have 40x6 = 240 transactions

As, i go through accounts once in two days, i go through 80 transactions at a time.
That means on 2nd Aug i check around 80 transactions
and again on 4th Aug i check another 80 transactions

now on Aug 5th my accountant has chance to edit/create any transaction he will created a transaction with 2nd Aug as issue date.

In present history Tab, i can see edited timestamp and transaction reference number , type of transaction and Action taken.

with these details, i will see Action = Create, and time stamp as 5th Aug and transaction Ref as 996 then with my normal human brain i will just think that my accountant just created a new transaction as usual which related to 5th Aug transaction.
But in reality my accountant created a transaction with issue date as 2nd Aug but Time stamp as 5th Aug

How to tackle this problem??
I just gave an example saying that i will check my accounts once in every two days but what if i check once in a week? too many transactions to recheck manually right?