In Sales Invoices Account drop down, you can see expense accounts as well as income accounts. I speak under correction, but I believe that this was done deliberately for those rare cases where you need to record the transaction into expense account even though it’s a sale invoice.
I have never needed to do this, and don’t know how often this would happen in a real business use. If this is extremely rare, I would recommend that Manager change the drop down to only show income accounts by default (whether in view or by typing an account name) whilst giving users the option to select other accounts to view expense or BS accounts.
This would ensure that users don’t accidentally enter a sales invoice transaction into say Installations Expenses instead of Installations Income.
Or better yet remove accounts in the drop down not relevant to the usage of that form in a real world business environment if it’s not actually required.
Income Accounts for Sales Invoices.
Expense Accounts for Purchase Invoices.
In all the years I have used Manager, I have never used an Expense Account in a Sales Invoice (other than by accident). I am not even sure that I have used the BS accounts in sales and purchase invoices.
Are you supposed to do it that way. It must make it very difficult for you to see clearly what your income versus expenses are overall if you have income recorded in your expenses account. The way I have it, all my income is under Income on the P&L and all my expenses are under the expenses section. So I can clearly see how much total income and total expenditure I have on the Summary page without running reports etc. In addition, I can see the income for each account and the corresponding expenses for that account.
Yes you can use it for that. But you misunderstood me. What I meant was that I don’t think that I have personally used the BS accounts in invoices yet.
Secondly buying and selling a fixed asset would happen very rarely relative to normal income and expenses. Hence my suggestion for making income the default in drop down for sales invoices and expenses the default for purchase invoices - with the option to select the contra or B/S items.
I know that I am not the only person that has mentioned it, as I seen posts asking about it somewhere in the past. I just think the list could be simplified a bit.
We have income from an online service provide by a Third party.
In our P & L we show
Gross income
Less commission
Net Income
in the Income section.
It does not make sense to include the commission in our our expenses as we do not pay them - they are deducted form the Service provider who then remits us the Net amount.
But it is useful to see the Gross income in our accounts as we can compare that to the number who availed of the service.
As long as it works for you. My setup works for me. The only problem that I have encountered is that Installations Income and Installations Expense accounts being similarly named, I have more than once put installations expense instead of income in the sales invoice.
Hence this topic.
I don’t have the problem with any other income, because the rest are inventory or non-inventory sales so all those services and products are allocated to the correct COA already. When I create a quote with them, I don’t have to add the COA at quote or invoice time as it’s included. Not so with Installation services as they are not inventory or non-inventory items because what is included in the service changes with each quote.
What will most likely be implemented is disable balance sheet accounts all-together.
That never happened. The GAAPs and tax authorities give you more options that what you can do in manager you only have one way of doing things. It’s either that way or the highway.
Don’t believe it! Here are some examples:
You need POS → too bad, not only is there no POS tab. Restrictions on Journals, Receipts and Invoices makes it damn near impossible to import sales, collections, receivables and payouts in a single entry. You will have to use multiple invoices and receipts throwing things in clearing account (for which DR. and CR. cannot be matched) and hope for the best. Good luck explaining how things work when the local tax authority pays you a visit.
Payslip deductions are liabilities → If that doesn’t suit your processes then don’t use manager for payslips. Many have made their case for using income accounts for deduction but all bets are off.
Certain changes were made to starting balances → the page that had all the links disappears. To this day Idk why? Apparently, it has too much in common with the “starting balance” report, which is totally useless if you ask me, and that was way too many options to have.
Depreciation tab introduced → Depreciation is out from journal entries. Not only that, remember when there wasn’t a depreciation tab. Remember all those journal entries you made for depreciation. Good luck having to redo all of them again because you never have an option.
As of late, the option to choose balance sheet accounts on non-inventory items is gone. Why? Because you that’s too many options.
I have to be honest, it’s becoming more of a pain having to bend and contort business processes to suit manager? Why should my processes involve many additional redundant steps that compensate for the narrow wiggle roam manager gives and it’s getting narrower by the day.
I hate to say this but manager is becoming a niche software by the day. If you have well developed business processes then maybe it’s not for you because manager gives at most 1 option for doing anything and the chances are it’s not the way you do it.
Sorry for the lengthy rant, but no, I don’t think we need anymore restrictions introduced or any features taken out.
Unfortunately I don’t use most of the features you talk about - payslip deductions, POS, Depreciation etc so can’t comment on that.
The bulk of my work is quotes, orders and invoices and bank import. Then the VAT return. So I probably don’t use many of the features other people talk about or if I do - then very rarely.
I am not asking for restrictions to be put in, but rather to automate as much as possible to eliminate potential mistakes.
I am in full agreement with you about how updates are rolled out with little or no feedback from users, especially where features that were being used have now been removed. I agree with you. I am not wanting to restrict anyone with my suggestion here, but rather have small changes to reduce as much as possible user error as it’s so easy to make a mistake and not realise it until months later.
I certainly don’t want B/S items and expenses to be removed from sales invoices as people obviously use it.
I am just saying to reconsider in light of the availabile history. There’s no such thing as no tomatoes or no mayo here; you either want the sandwich or you don’t.
Yes - your problem is not with my request, but rather the lack of consultation and feedback with users before rolling out updates. I do understand where you are coming from as I have seen on more than enough occasions how updates have caused problems for end users. I am still at a loss how removing the today feature in the calendar is supposed to be an improvement!
But automating almost always means just that - restrictions.
Your automating suggestion requires the non-disclosure of expenses accounts for Sales Invoices, this non- disclosure is a “restriction” unless the user takes an additional step to give themselves the option elsewhere.
But it is not, use of Expense or BS accounts on Sales Invoices is much more common then you can imagine.
At the heart of this situation is the User, they need to name their accounts so the confusion doesn’t occur ,such as with the account “Interest” which can be both income and expense. This is resolved with Interest Received and Interest Paid.
However, the core of your problem (I think) has been caused by the removal of a previous standard feature. Prior to this de-development (downgrading) of Manager, your separate “Installations” accounts would have appeared in the dropdown under an Income group and an Expense group.
From the topic “Database Corruption”:
Removal of the selection of “Today” from the calendar.
Removal of the chart of account “grouping” from the chart of account dropdown.
e.g. this is a particular issue when you have P&L accounts with similar names as BS accounts, now you can’t tell which one is which.
There are significant benefits in terms of Manager’s ease of use to encouraging use of unique names.
To explain, many people find GUID/UUID difficult to use in batch create / batch update, localisation, custom themes etc. To have the option to not use these machine codes requires users have, and are firmly encouraged to use unique names. Use of unique names is required for all links which currently use GUID/UUID pointers/database links.
A possible half way house is to combine both GUID and text name during export but accept either during import and give an error if a non unique name is used. Eg Export format:
< GUID > ( < text name > )
Import processing
If only valid GUID then use that
if GUID followed by matching text label (ie same as export format) then use that
If GUID followed by not matching text label then report error “GUID text label mismatch”
If valid unique text label then use that
If valid text label but used in multiple records then report error “text label not unique” or “Text label used for multiple records”
If no matching records for used GUID or text label then report error “Specified record does not exist”
note when an error is detected it is probably best to 1. Not accept the batch import 2. Display the error(s) 3. Update the clipboard to include error messages in place to assist finding them in the source file if required.
This is possible during batch operations but is more difficult during coded reports as the user running the report is likely not to understand the program restrictions. As a result to increase Manager ease of use for future new users, I can see no other way other than put the structure in place to strongly encourage use of unique names. Either that or accept GUID as a permanent complexity of using Manager.
I have reflected on the issue over the Easter weekend and think that perhaps I am looking in the wrong direction.
First @Brucanna I never use the scroll down option in the drop down anymore. I simply type the name of the account - in this case installations and selected installations expenses by mistake instead of installations income. So having the accounts listed in income-expenses-BS order is of no benefit to me anyway. It makes far more sense to type the name and the auto-fill filters the list to just what you type. Far more efficient.
Secondly, to everyone in general, I almost never use the accounts drop down because virtually all my transactions in quotes and invoices are either inventory or non-inventory. So selecting the inventory or non inventory item always auto-fills the account anyway. I can’t comment on other people’s working practice as I know that many businesses don’t use the inventory, but I presume that they do use the non-inventory items so in their case - the issue posted becomes irrelevant as the COA is always autofilled when you enter the non-inventory item.
The key issue is how best to address user cases where one is not entering an inventory or non-inventory item into the transaction list. For payments and receipts on the payments/receipts forms for example, this is now entirely automated for me through the use of bank imports and bank rules so I never have to select suppliers, customers, other, accounts receivable or accounts payable - other than those very few transactions where I need to split an amount on the bank statement into two or more transactions.
Assuming that most people work similar to myself and use bank imports, bank rules, recurring purchase invoices, recurring sales invoices, non-inventory items and (possibly) inventory items - the question that is really relevant, is how often does one need to manually enter a COA in the dropdown of a transaction list on any given form. Other than year end journal entries, the only time I personally actually have a problem is with my installations (income and expense) COA’s. The reason being that the installation is not a set item with a set price.
However, what I have now done is created a non-inventory item for installation services and left the description blank, but select the boxes can be bought and sold and Vat at 20%. This also solves a secondary problem in that I kept forgetting to add the VAT as this is not auto-filled.
So for me, my problem is now permanently solved. I just need to autofill the description. Question remains whether other people find themselves having to use the accounts dropdown a lot to manually select the COA. Some of you accountants doing very complex things so possibly this issue is still a problem for me. I will mark it closed for me.
Yes, but prior to the depreciating of the titled groupings within the account drop down box you wouldn’t have the mistake as the account type was clearly identifiable to you - see below.
But prior to the depreciating the accounts were not just listed in income-expenses-BS order, they were grouped by income-expenses-BS order so the benefit is, selecting the correct account.
However, after the depreciating, all you get is 4 installations accounts listed, one after the other without knowing which one is which, hence your mistaken selection.
The account drop down box “groupings” provided that automation, and user flexibility.
Increasingly, user flexibility is the one aspect which is being increasingly removed from Manager.
Yes, and to be brutally direct, nor should any person who wants to use good fundamental accounting software need to know any of this technical hoo-ha.
Yes I agree. Guid’s have no place in batch update. They need to be replaced with the actual names!
I am not sure what is going on with Manager anymore as things are constantly being removed and added back again! Maddening. Glad to see the return of the today button.
If you want to be certain what you are changing, the thing being changed must be uniquely identified.
That can be done by the user giving and only using unique names or the software creating a unique name (GUID). Both have short and long term pros and cons.
But there is no getting around the requirement to uniquely specify what you are actually changing.
It is indeed maddening that in this case and in others we no longer can see the categories where account names are identical and thus staff need to guess which one to take (e.g. third one in the list for this and second for that). Many errors are being made as people do not keep a user manual for the specific setup next to their computer. Despite calls for @lubos to fix this to how it used to work no update or rational has been provided.
