I’m sorry but this is a bit silly. How can I not record a journal entry for the transfer of funds or deprecation? Why am I limited on using journal entries? To limit mistakes? I’m pretty sure that 99% of people who use this software are very familiar with accounting, if not, experts. First feature on the website states “Full Featured Accounting” but that should be changed to “Limited Featured…”.
I am accountant and I was hoping this software would be my replacement for QB but the fact that I can’t even use some of the most basic accounting features makes me want to look for another program already.
As a new user to Manager I strongly recommend actually reading all the table of contents of the guides so you have an overview of using Manager as it’s designed to be used and what information is readily available https://www2.manager.io/guides/
Contrary to what you may think, most users are not accountants and have very little accounting knowledge
Manager has been expressly designed to avoid using journal entries as the general population finds using debits and credits confusing and not at all intuitive
It is possible to set up a chart of accounts which will allow you to only use journal entries, but this means that you can not use many of the built-in features such as bank reconciliations, receipts, payments, etc
As a new user, please read through the guides following the link given earlier
In Manager, most transactions are entered in other functional tabs, thereby automating many decisions about account posting and reducing errors. So journal entries are relatively few. Most record transfers between accounts. In fact, no transaction involving the actual receipt or payment of funds by a business can be recorded via a journal entry.
Then you need to also accept that it is different from QB and need to learn like any change of application how it works and adapt the ways you do things. Manager is not a QB clone, heck, most alternatives are not and all require you to do things differently.
Please where does it lack in features compared to QB? You are talking about usage that requires you to use functional tabs that actually make life easier. If anything Manager has more features than QB, the latter depending largely on mods. It also presents more than all the obligated reports and through custom reports and the new Advanced Queries even allows you to get deeper in the accounting data than most competitors. Can Manager be improved? Sure, that is why the ideas box has many entries (in my view too many but that is a different discussion). Is there something lacking, potentially but not yet, and this relates to features put into obsolete settings such as custom themes. I still use these until an alternative to bring some colour to our themes is being developed.
So you can only decide for yourself if it is worth your effort to learn a new application or stay with QB or look elsewhere. Personally I find it off-putting when someone rants about something they have just encountered and have not tried long enough to see its strengths.
Obviously you was not 100% convinced with QB. QB desktop probably what you are familiar with, but when you move to the cloud and are looking for an accounting solution, at a sensible price, there is not a lot of options. I feel you might have come to the right place, just need to get a better feel for the value for money relative to the functionalities and as you will learn from this forum, a solid road map.
As an accountant, you care about financial statements. And I agree, journal entries would serve the purpose.
But what about Payments & Receipts Summary report or other management type reports generated out of accounting entries?
Payments & Receipts summary shows summary of cash transactions only and the total must add up to the movements in cash and bank accounts.
Now imagine you make a journal entry that is a work of art, involving 50 accounts including one odd bank or cash account.
How would you include this journal entry on Receipts & Payments summary? You don’t care about this report but if you are using accounting software with your clients, your clients might care about this report and your journal entry which does what you need for the purpose of Profit & Loss Statement and Balance Sheet will ruin Payments & Receipts summary for your clients.
Is there a solution to this? Sure… I could allow journal entries into cash and bank accounts and then on Receipts & Payments summary have an extra line called Adjustments so the report is kind of isolating these journal entries from other transactions. But I need to think this through. There are other implications.
Manager has very little restrictions on data input. You can debit/credit almost any control account/sub-account pair from any transaction type. This allows you to enter transactions exactly how they happened without workarounds that are common in Quickbooks.
The fact you have noticed very quickly that journal entries can’t debit/credit cash & bank accounts + depreciation/amortization accounts tells me you’ve done quite thorough evaluation of the software because these are the only 2 control account types that you can’t debit/credit using journal entries.
Another thing to consider is how this will play into Bank Reconciliations.
And as far as this:
It is full featured since it’s been passing audits for users for a decade, I think that’s enough proof of this claim, @PuddingMan
But if you still insist on using Journal Entries for everything, you can always create an ordinary chart of account entry for instead of Bank and Cash Accounts and you can use them then in Journal Entries.
In fact @PuddingMan, one of the first things users notice when switching from other software is this part.
If you search this forum for ou will find many users complaining about exactly that when they use Manager for the first time – I’m guilty of that as well.
But after getting used to it, most users prefer the current setup.
For Depreciation, you can use Special Accounts and this willl enable you to achieve the outcome you want. See this guide for more details:
Maybe debits are considered as receipts and credits as payments on Journal Entry.
Or maybe an option to categorize a Journal entry as receipt, payment, adjustment etc.
Don’t know what good it would do as Payments and Receipts can be used for anything. Even for adjustments.
