Inventory Write Offs Template

This weekend I have been working extensively on designing a custom theme for invoices, delivery notes etc.

One thing that I have noticed which I am actually very impressed with, is how consistent all the forms actually are. This has made it very easy to design one template that works for every single form within Manager as all forms use the same fields naming concept across the system.

I would like to highlight in the interests of consistency, every form in Manager (where it’s relevant) uses the Field Description. With the exception of Inventory Write Offs which uses the field name Item instead. I would recommend renaming this to Description for consistency of names between all forms. Minor issue I know, but I really liked how well the consistency of field names on all forms works well with creating custom templates.

I also suspect that consistency is a major part of the reason why Manager is so simple to use so I am keen to improve consistency on that point alone.

What version are you using? The Description field for the inventory-write-off-form is a summary-level field for the entire transaction, just as for other transaction forms. The field labelled Inventory Item is where you select the inventory item itself. If your version uses different terminology, you should update. See Write off inventory | Manager.

inventory%20write%20off

I am not talking about the edit form, but the viewing form. Fields are Qty and Item. Every other template as QTY and Description

But the content of the Item column for a write-off is the item’s name (and the Code, if that is used) from the inventory item definition. It does not contain the contents of the Description field from the inventory item definition.

It is more important that the column label (which is the variable column.label in a theme) should conform to what is in the column rather than be consistent with other forms. On other forms, the Description column contains the contents of that field. Notice, for example, that on a sales invoice, the item’s name is not a column, only the code and description. It’s important to understand that, while themes are used across all transaction forms, the contents of the variable arrays change from transaction type to type according to context.

Good Point. I had not noticed that!

The sales invoice is not relevant as you are talking about editing the form, not viewing. I am only talking about consistency on the view templates.

I am not sure if @lubos would want to change the write off view template or not. You are correct that the column is a different column from the usual one. However, the description field and code fields should work perfecly for this form as well and would make it consistent across all templates.

My point was that they are already consistent. They are labelled to indicate what they contain. Your suggestion would have them be consistent only in their labels, ignoring their actual content. And that is something the program does not do elsewhere.

No you misunderstood me! I meant use the content in the Description Field and the content in the Code field and display those two fields on the template. Then they are consistent. I am not suggesting that the field name be replaced but retaining the content of another field. That is not desirable from a programatic viewpoint.

There is no reason why the content of the description field cannot be used on this form especially as this form has the ability to add custom templates so the implication is that this would be sent to people who don’t have access to Manager anyway as there is no logic to using custom template for internal documents.