Before I go into detail, just want to shoutout to @lubos for always updating Manager. Sometimes it can be really frustrating when my workflows keep getting broken by the changes, but I do appreciate that this means you really put a lot of work into developing the software.
When creating a divisional balance sheet, Manager is not taking into account starting balances (at least not for special accounts - have not tested for normal accounts).
I use control accounts for various investments, with special accounts for different brokers. So I may have Barclays on my balance sheet, and then BCS - X and BCS - Y as special accounts linked to that line on the balance sheet. Many of the special accounts have starting balances from when I took over the accounting for the client. I have created a division X and division Y, because I want to have a balance sheet showing how much of BCS and other investments is held at each broker as at the year end. When I generate the balance sheet for division X and Y, some of the holdings are showing up as negative, because it is not counting the opening balances. I have tried using a custom report as a workaround, but that is not taking into account the starting balances either. Also - maybe I’m missing it, but it doesn’t appear that you can use custom accounts to show special account balances.
The report I’m trying to generate is ridiculously simple, so its really frustrating that there isn’t a way to do this simply. Currently my best bet is to go to the special accounts and copy to clipboard, but this doesn’t conform to the date restrictions set on the summary page. So to do that, I would have to make a backup, delete all transactions after the point I’m looking for, and then do that, which is a ridiculous amount of effort for such a simple report. The other option is to manually click into each control account to see the breakdown, but with a few hundred of them across clients, that would take forever.
Other issues I’ve come across since updating (last version was from January sometime):
- Is there a reason that custom reports don’t have clickable numbers like the P&L/BS? That would be really helpful to quickly correct any errors found when using custom reports for recons, or just to get more info on a transaction.
- It used to be that if I type 1/1/2020 in the date field, it would pick that up. Now I am forced to type 01/01/2020 for it to pick up.
- I used to be able to copy a date from excel and just click anywhere in the date field and ctrl v, and it would update the whole date field. Now it just pastes it in between the existing characters, so you have to first select it all/delete it before pasting in. Doesn’t sound like a big deal but with large volumes of transactions this adds up…
Other things that would be very useful:
- I want a report of all GL transaction in a period, with P&L and Balance Sheet accounts not mixed up within each other. I’d like it to show BCS - X: Opening Balance; Transactions; Closing Balance.
- To be able to use the GL transactions report filtered by more than just one account. Currently you can choose a single account, or all accounts, no in between.
- Being able to create a custom report showing the balances of special accounts would be great, even with the above divisional balance sheet sorted out. I still use control accounts for other things not related to the different brokers/divisions.
- Custom reports have a ‘contra’ field, but I can’t seem to get this to work. I do a lot of journal entries and then use reports to check that I haven’t made any errors. This would be a lot easier and more reliable if I can see what the contra of an entry is.
- It would be awesome if I can create a custom report showing all the dividends/withholding taxes etc and show which tracking code (now division) is attached to each transaction. I use the tracking codes so I can track revenue by investment, and currently there is no feasible way to reconcile that I have allocated everything to the correct tracking code, given the volume of transactions. The dividends etc are fine because I have set up bank rules to handle that and remove the possibility of errors, but I still do a lot of journal entries, for example to recognise expired option premiums as income - I put a tracking code on these, but it is easy for me to make a stupid mistake on this when doing a large volume of these entries.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks again for all the great work improving Manager.
