Items description no longer searchable in sale invoice

I found out that on my upgrade to version 16.7.59 I cannot search an item in the sales invoice using word(s) in the description field of the item. It’s very difficult now to remember the codes.
For example in the past, an item with code MSFTO365BE had description Microsoft Office … would be added in the sales invoice by search for the words “microsoft office”.
Now I cannot find it like this and it is difficult if not impossible to remember all the codes of the sales products.
any solution for this?

Are you speaking about searching for a description of an individual line item within the sales invoice from the Sales Invoices tab register? To my knowledge, this has never been possible. The Search function in any Manager register searches information visible in the register display, not the full contents of the transactions listed.

In the case of sales invoices, the Description field shows the Invoice Summary level description of the entire invoice, not anything from individual line items.

In prior versions of Manager, an entry in the Invoice Summary may have carried over as the default description for a line item. As a result, perhaps you thought you were searching the full content of invoices when you were actually searching only the Invoice Summary line.

I think that @nichri means, when creating a sales quote or invoice you click on the item column then type what you are searching for. You used to be able to type the description of the item to narrow the search, now that does not happen, it only searches for item code or item name text string. I am sure i have mentioned this before but am unable to find my post.
Please could we have the ability to search by item description back, it was much easier that way.

thnx, this is what I meant.
We use item codes when we have a purchase invoice and we already have the codes from the supplier so it’s easy there (usually) to find the product purchased.
In the case of sales though, when I want to sell a laptop for example, I will start writing ‘lenovo’ and I would (in the past) get all the lenovo related (in the description) items.
I start to regret upgrading because this is a big issue for us.

Any workaround or fix on this? Please?

Why not put Lenovo in the name of item then? The idea is that you should be able to tell apart all items by their name (without need of looking at description).

Item names don’t show on quotes or invoices. They are internal.

Ι have hundreds of items without having names so far. It is very
inconvenient to go and add them now.
This feature existed in your previous version and was/is very important for
us.

I think it won’t be that dificcult for you to make the description field
searchable again.

This is a hamble request and not a demand, although it would make me
happier :slight_smile:

Nicolas

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I would also like request the description to be used in the search function for the exact same reason. Fingers crossed!

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There is Batch Update function to let you update item names in bulk.

Why am I pushing for you to do this? Here is the thing… if you can’t tell inventory items apart by their names, how can you possibly read inventory reports which don’t show any item description either. Or when you drill-down from financial statements to break-down Inventory on hand account, you will see again balances grouped by item names.

The reason why description field is not searchable is to make users make item names meaningful. If they don’t, they start requesting features such as “put item description on inventory reports” which I’m not going to do because item descriptions can be long and would make inventory reports unnecessarily longer than needed and more cluttered.

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Digging up an old topic here. While many of our Inventory items are barcoded and thus very easy to quickly and accurately input into a PO, SO or invoice etc however more often than not the crew are in back office away from inventory product. So this scenario leaves them having to type in the ITEM field for the PO entry or whatever.

The problem is, the typing and search has to be accurate even in terms of spaces leading to frustration and correct item not found.

Could the search in the ITEM field, please include say the ITEM NAME field as well and be more relaxed? Similar to the search under the INVENTORY tab please?

Some chat about a similar thing here: Purchase Invoices - Item Codes - Item Names - Search Function

Yes, of course it does. You are dealing with an auto-complete type of search, where the options are progressively narrowed as you type more. Mistyping a space puts you on a different branch of the identification tree.

As an example, suppose you had inventory items named Lamp shade and Red LED lamps. You start typing l - a - m - p. So far, both options appear in the Item field as possible matches. As soon as you type the space, Red LED lamps disappears from the list. If you instead typed an s, Lamp shade would disappear. All searches in Manager look for literal strings, ignoring capitalization. And a space is a character in such a search.

It already does.

OK I see the two fields are used however can the search be less strict when attempting to add inventory to a Invoice or Purchase Order. In short the product items / Inventory are not easily found as different people search and think differently when looking for something. It can be largely solved by applying the same search feature / pattern already used in the Inventory Tab.

Eg. if red shoe is searched or if shoe red is searched the inventory item will be found.

What you describe are two completely different processes. The Search function when viewing a tab listing is designed to work across fields. So strings entered are searched for discretely. For example,

When choosing an item name, you are using a progressive auto-complete process. So, in the example below, if you type “chef” there are two potential options:

Screen Shot 2021-01-25 at 6.50.54 AM

But if you then add the letter “c”, both vanish:

Screen Shot 2021-01-25 at 6.51.21 AM

The point of the first Search function is to find all possibilities. The point of the second auto-complete function is to eliminate possible items whose names have similar content, doing away with the need to use the mouse to make a selection.

The search technique works very well under the inventory tab why is it not used when assembling invoices and purchase orders as well?

One would think the more restrictive search should apply to the inventory tab and non-inventory maintenance screens. However the current arrangement under those tabs work really well.