Issue with printing to PDF large GL transactions file

1

One of startups we support has significantly grown in 2021. We can properly print the GL transactions of earlier years to PDF (so not the inbuilt PDF generator but with the Print to PDF interface) and this results in a PDF with many A4 Landscape pages for each year printed. However, the much larger GL transaction Print to PDF requires but not this much larger 2021 one requires it to be changed to A4 Landscape. Suspecting printer driver issues I installed various one such as CUTE-PDF and VipRiser but exactly the same behaviour.

The legacy PDF generator can not handle 2021 at all but does work also well with each previous year, but can not be used for 2021 hence the need to use Print to PDF. Even emailing did not work with Legacy either.

As such I can only deduct that it is to do with Manager and hope that @Lubos can look into this.

1 Like
2

If you are using the Print to PDF function of your operating system, then it is most likely a problem with the operating system and printer drivers than Manager

What has changed to make the GL Transactions Report much wider than in previous years?

3

We used Windows, Linux and MacOS, various printer drivers and virtual ones as explained. The only difference between 2021 and the previous years such as 2020 is the growth in transactions. For whatever reason Print to PDF does the correct creation of A4 Portrait style output for the 2020 GL and requires to shift to A4 Landscape style output for 2021. Same business, same types of transactions, only more than double bank transactions. The issue is with Manager otherwise the other years would have the same issue.

4

To confirm, are all years’ transactions in the same data file?

5

Yes they are, it is one business using Manager since they started. It just luckily grew quick :slight_smile:

6

I am moving this to bugs on the basis of your reports, @eko. But I have no idea what might cause the problem. Does this happen only with the General Ledger Transactions report? It might help if you could post screen shots of the different years’ reports. This is something that will be difficult to replicate without access to the particular data file.

7

Thank you @Tut, I am willing to share if needed with @Lubos so he can look into it. The GL for 2021 is more than 34MB and 1,605 landscape pages.

8

Presumably, no one prints this - it even hard to see what anyone would do with such a big report except stock in in a cupboard somewhere

9

I think the potential issue is that—at some unknown ledger length—the report spontaneously misbehaves for a user quite experienced with both the program and computer technology in general.

1 Like
10

Exporting in a format such as comma separated values would have a use case as that’s the normal method of importing into another program (eg accounts software).

I agree I can see very limited value in a pdf copy of such a large data set.

11

I agree, too. The question is, at what size does the problem begin?

12

Agree with what one will do with it but the The tax authorities in the country where that business operates require the GL transactions report as part of their tax audit.

13

The previous year 2020 is roughly one-third the size and generates the PDF correctly in A4 Portrait mode. Also printing a 6 month period for 2021 renders it correctly. So irrespective of the “value” of needing this report as expressed by some, but required by the authorities, it is a feature of Manager. When it does not work for whatever reason as expected should be investigated as a bug.

14

Print to PDF scales better than internal PDF generator. But it’s not without limits.

This is not an issue with Manager though as Print to PDF is a feature provided by underlying operating system.

I suggest, create quarterly GL reports, then use merge PDF tool to merge 4 PDF documents into 1.

15

@Lubos I understand that I can split the files but the auditors wanted annual transaction ones, which I managed with Print to PDF but only in landscape format.

I tried it across different operating systems (windows, linux macos with Manager desktop version v22.3.74, and server edition Ubuntu Manager v22.3.74), browsers (chrome, opera, firefox, safari) and hardware configurations (all high spec with one system having 128 MB ram installed). All showed same behaviour and therefore most likely is a result of how Manager or SQLIte on which it depends magically changes print format.

So can you please explore why it changes to landscape which even generates more pages than portrait. There must be a trigger and as it is consistent as mentioned across so many platforms it is most logical to conclude that it is either to do with Manager or its database platform. Also excel (copy to clipboard, etc) does Print to PDF, so yes that is a work around but it somehow confirms that Manager does something to prevent it properly being done.

16

If you see it on the screen, Manager’s work has been done. When you do Print to PDF, Manager is not being asked to do any additional work.

Even though you’ve tested across many operating systems and web-browsers, it doesn’t really matter because with exception of Firefox, every other web-browser on every operating system is basically WebKit / Chromium.

No. It’s WebKit / Chromium.

Excel is not using WebKit.