Latest version of Manager has two problems

1

On my live version which is January 2023 version, the count of suppliers, customers, inventory items etc - all show the count of active items. In the latest version of Manager it shows the count of all items - both active and inactive! Customers, Suppliers, Inventory Items are not transactions so should not be showing the count for all items, but rather active customers, suppliers etc.

In the latest version, the list of Customers and Suppliers mostly shows in alphabetical order, but I have A-Z, then more items A-Z again. It looks like the order is based on whether each supplier/client has email address or telephone number filled out. So for suppliers it’s doing A-Z for all suppliers that do not have an email address, then it’s listing A-Z for all suppliers with an email address. In Customers, it’s listing all customers with Telephone Number A-Z and then it’s listing all Customers that don’t have the telephone number field filled out in order A-Z. This is obviously a bug, because the order should not depend on whether the email field is filled out etc.

2

That is not a bug. It is by design. Inactive customers, suppliers, or inventory items still exist. And transactions referencing them are still valid. So they are counted in the total.

I cannot reproduce this. Can you please illustrate with screen shots?

I cannot reproduce this, either. Illustrate this with screen shots. What version number are you using? And by the way, Telephone is a custom field.

3

I confirm that I am having a similar experience to @dalacor.

For example: Suppliers that have been created since January 2023 (15) are appearing in alpha order at the top of the list and the remaining suppliers after that in alpha order.

Also, bank accounts do a similar thing ( 2 separate alpha order lists) but can’t link to any reason.

Customers are OK but have not created any new since January.

1 click on the name heading (in the problem lists) sorts correctly but this has to be done each time you enter each list.

4

I can confirm this.
Same applies to customers.

5

Ahhh. I have not created new customers or suppliers recently in my test business.

@dalacor, is it possible your situation is related to creation date rather than telephone numbers or email addresses?

Before putting this into bugs, I would like to identify the actual problem.

6

See the reply on customers count by @lubos

Also see this

7

@Khurram_Shahzad, your links seem to be to some private message other forum members cannot see (even as a moderator). Can you provide more context?

8

@Tut, Here is full conversation about customers count.

Hope you are fine. Earlier there was total of active customers showing in customers tab but now it is showing total of active plus inactive customers which should not be the way. It should be as previous the total of only active customers. Please fix this as soon as possible.

Within each tab you will be able to set up pre-defined lists. So for example, you can get list of active customers. That will also give you a count. This is coming soon.

9

It has nothing to do with when the accounts were created. I have not created any this year that I am aware of. Many of my affected suppliers/customers are many years old. I think the reason some people may be seeing a difference is because there is something different about their customers/suppliers created after Jan 2023 for example. In my case the differences in customers/suppliers goes back years based on information I have filled out for some, but not all.

I suspect that what is happening is that the sort list is now sorting based on more than one variable - so alphabet as well as the existence of other fields or something different about them. It’s not a co-incidence that every single supplier of mine A-Z without an email address is listed first, then all suppliers with an email address is listed A-Z after that. The same for my customers, except the Tel No is what is different. It’s not the email address, Tel field or whatever is being seen in bank accounts that is the issue specifically. I suspect that the sort filter is doing more than just sorting alphabetically and is broken. Haven’t noticed anything about the banking, but I only have one bank account.

While I don’t exactly what is causing it, it is clear there is a bug, because this would never be intended and several people can duplicate the issue, albeit with different parameters being used. It may have something to do with the new form defaults and search features that were implemented at some point, in addition to new fields, columns created? That would be my guess. More specifically the sort filter is broken.

As such, I will amend the title to reflect it’s a bug as it can be replicated and is not intended design of the program. While we don’t know the exact cause yet, it fits the definition of bug.

@lubos - I will refer you to this previous discussion regarding the active count - Questions about Forum login / Tab count includes inactive items - #7 by lubos. I still believe that bank accounts, cash accounts, customers, suppliers, employees and inventory items should only show active counts as they are not transactions like quotes or invoices. You yourself agreed with me at the time and reversed the changes back then so these tabs only showed active.

I am not sure why you have changed it, but please do reconsider. Transactions, I fully agree should show all counts including inactive agreed. But I can’t see any purpose to showing the total count of “databases” of things such as all inventory items for example. In my live version of Manager, I am seeing 175 Inventory Items that I carry. In the new version I am seeing 425 items as nearly two thirds are inactive as the models change pretty much annually. I have no use for the number 425 which is meaningless, whereas seeing seeing 175 inventory items give me an idea of how much inventory I manage. It doesn’t cause massive problems obviously, but including inactive for certain tabs doesn’t provide information that is useful.

10

Actually upon consideration, one could make the same argument for quotes, orders and invoices in that it makes more sense to see the count for active items rather than all transactions. Knowing one has 10 active quotes to be chased up is more useful than knowing that you have 500 quotes sent since you opened the business.

So I would suggest that all tabs show only the active count. This way it is consistent for all tabs and provides information that is probably more useful for most businesses. I certainly have no need to know that I have sent 500 quotes since I opened my business, particularly since I can get that information by click on quotes and see the total number at the bottom. Number of active quotes however, would be much more useful.

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11

Moderators are instructed not to allow bugs to be labeled as such in subject lines. Their status is indicated by tags. Otherwise, fixed bugs would still be labeled as bugs.

12

Good idea. It makes sense.

13

It’s actually sorted by Code then by Name. But now that there is Edit Columns button, it’s possible not to have Code column visible. Could you enable Code column and see if any of those customers/suppliers/bank accounts etc that seem to be out of order have anything in Code field?

There are still tabs where Inactive is not a thing. E.g. Receipts and Payments and other tabs.

Here is what I’m planning to do… there will be purging ability where you will be able to purge historical data. For example, delete anything older than 7 years. This means eventually those inactive inventory items would end up being purged. So let’s see how that ends up working out first.

14

I enabled code column for both suppliers and customers. There is nothing in the code column for any of them. I think it’s being sorted by more than just code then name. I updated to the latest version by the way.

I will have to see about the purging of old data. In principle I agree as this is the direction that more businesses should be going in - old data that has been deleted cannot be stolen or compromised if it no longer exists. In addition, there is no point keeping inventory items that have stopped being manufactured a decade ago! So yes, it makes sense to look at purging some data.

But putting that aside, the key point about the number on the tab - is what number is actually useful? If you take quotes for example and you have thousands of quotes going back years - does 30 000 on the quotes tab provide any useful information? For me active or open quotes count number on the tab, would be useful information. The value of 30 000 doesn’t provide any useful information that I am aware of. However, I am not worried about, as I think there are more important things to sort out such as the customer portal.

16

Is this a good idea in accounting software? My intuition tells me that all data in an accounting system should be immutable and we should only restrict access in views?

If I am misunderstanding something here, my apologies.

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17

@holycow I’m not sure what you are referring to when you say the

You can think of the “Purge” as a database split utility – which is very common in accounting software. I’m pretty certain that this is what @lubos meant and not like purging of emails.

This would be a great addition as businesses using Manager mature and their databases keep growing, after all, all laws have a legal minimum record retention period – which is really the practical maximum if we want to be efficient.