Impressive amount of lateral thinking happening here, quite inspiring.
All sound OK to me however another idea to throw into the mixing pot. It is hard for me to judge how intuitive it is as I know too well what I want it to do.
Receipts & Payments
Payments are made to Suppliers much more commonly that to customers. Similarly money is received from customers much more commonly than from supplier. There are rare occasions where these associations don’t apply. Manager could use this statistical information to optimise the user interface / set default behavior. For example
When entering a Payment in Manager
- Rename the “Payee” label “Payee or Supplier”
- Enable linking the transaction to a Supplier
- Any tax code used result in changes to the Purchases shown in the “Tax Summary” report (or associated report transformation), and do not effect the Sales shown in those reports.
Similarly when entering a Receipt in Manager
- Rename the “Payer” label “Payer or Customer”
- Enable linking the transaction to a Customer
- Any tax codes used result in changes to the Sales shown in the “Tax Summary” report (or associated report transformation), and do not effect the Purchases shown in those reports.
For the much less common transactions where the money is flowing in the opposite direction and the Manager user wants to enter a negative adjustment to sales or purchases, these are entered by:
- Paying money to a customer / a negative sales adjustment: the Manager users chooses the transaction Type “Receipt” showing & enabling linking to a customer. A negative amount line item is entered.
- Receiving money from a supplier / a negative purchase adjustment: the Manager user chooses the transaction Type “Payment” showing & enabling linking to a supplier. A negative amount line item is entered.
A warning could be displayed if a Manager user enters tax codes, a supplier / customer link on a Receipt or Payment where line item accounts are Accounts payable or accounts receivable (invoice, credit note, or debit note)
I thought this would enable relatively efficient data entry for the usual case and involves a relatively small change to Managers user interface / existing user base training. Manager makes an intelligent guess at what the user is trying to enter but ensures the use verify that the usual situation applies. The Manager user chooses links from the Customer or Supplier database not a combined database (which if combined would need an indicator showing if it was a supplier or customer link).
Journal entries
A possible solution is, when a Manager users enters a tax code
- A “Type” Menu field is shown which can be either “Sale” or “Purchase”
- A field is shown enabling selection a customer (if type = Sale) or supplier (if type = Purchase).
- Manager sets the initial value of Type field when it is first shown (or software upgrade) base on if the tax code applies to a credit or debit line item.
I thought this user interface would be similar to how Manager behaves elsewhere. Manager has a reasonable guess at what the user is trying to enter but again the user could readily change it if required. It also enables the user selection from either the customer or suppler database (not a combined address book)