I’m considering building an unofficial collection of tools that will expand Manager’s feature set. If that sounds interesting to you, join the waiting list: https://mtools.io/
I have checked with @lubos (developer) & @Tut (moderator) prior to posting this external link.
I’ve been thinking for the past several months that many of the feature requests I see could easily be handled over the API. I could build a nice interface around it and wrap up the API so anyone could use it.
Things that would be possible to do (for example):
Download a ZIP archive containing a PDF for every invoice ever sent to Customer A
Generate reminder emails (or an SMS) for all customers with an overdue invoice
Accept payments by credit card / PayPal / etc and sync that transaction to Manager
Additional Notes:
This would only be compatible with online versions of Manager - i.e. Cloud / Server - visible from a web URL. Desktop edition cannot be supported at the current time.
For security reasons, you’ll need to re-enter your password every time you use one of the tools (we won’t store it on the server). When changes come to API authentication in a future Manager update so that access is more restricted, this might improve.
At the moment I’m looking for an expression of interest. If there is enough interest, I’ll build a prototype for people to play around with and test.
Not all feature requests fit this model. Some things just have to be directly in Manager itself to work properly.
The new plugin system is separate to this and it’s not clear on whether there’d be a way to connect the two. We may just have to wait and see when it is released.
Any new functionality that can be taken advantage of will definitely be looked at, but keep in mind that this is an external system… whereas I suspect plugins will be installed directly onto your Manager app.
^ Add your email address if you’d like to find out more in the future. I promise not to spam your mailbox.
Further, feel free to reply here for any features you’d like to see implemented. I am adding them to a private TODO list, so that when I’m building a prototype, I have a list of things to choose from.
New item added yesterday:
A mobile-friendly way to add expense claims very quickly. For example, logging my business travel while sitting in my car looking at the odometer, so I don’t forget to do it later.
Representing Sales Invoices as XML? Sure, don’t see why not. Will add it to the list.
You can probably do it using a custom theme within Manager if you want to. You’d build up the theme to represent the XML structure, and then view-source and copy it into a file (rather than saving as PDF). But it’s not exactly user friendly that way.
You have one main problem with custom theme with XML. That you are limited with only the fields that @lubos is showing in the invoice. For example, if you look at the XML Italian structure, you will see that even if all the lines are subject to the same VAT taxation, you will have to show them line by line. Accessing to the database will come up with something more flexible.
Is this something that you are still proceeding with or would it be possible for me to hire a developer to implement the following features: Don’t even know if these can be done via an api?
Status of quotes, sales orders and Purchase Orders to use same concept has unpaid/paid invoices red (lost business), green (for successful sale), orange (for open), grey/silver for archived and blue for chase up - Status of quotes, Sales Orders and Purchase Orders Idea I have accepted that this idea will never be implemented in Manager as it has been asked for by many different users for more than 5 years and there seems to be a lot of resistance to making the quotes and orders tab work the same way the invoices tab works. So I will have to develop it myself as it is now becoming impossible to manage without this feature
Some solution to link serial numbers from supplier to client so that when I buy a laptop from a supplier, I can input the serial number and then when I sell that laptop, I can select the serial number. Obviously if I buy ten laptops, I have ten serial numbers and I need to select the right serial number for the laptop I am selling. I don’t know how this would work in practice, but I need to keep track of serial numbers (from both supplier, on hand and customer point of view) for warranty purposes etc. For my line of work selling IT equipment like laptops, this is a major issue for me and does impact very negatively on my ability to track where a specific inventory item came from and went to. At the moment I have no system in place to track serial numbers.
MTD VAT, MTD Corporation, MTD Self Assessment HMRC API. Also RTI Payroll API to link directly to HMRC
Ability to drill down on Budgets and on Summary Page via Categories or something. For budgeting, so I can see how I calculated a figure. For Summary Page I want to break up the inventory cost and inventory sales into inventory categories such as laptops/computers/whiteboards or on my personal accounts break up the Food Account into vegetables, meat, dairy etc
Import serial numbers and till slips using barcode reader, but enabling users to define what accounts items go into after being scanned so carrots on till slip go into vegetables etc?
Ability to change colours of Manager as I don’t like the grey yellow look which is a bit bland.
These are some of the sort of things that I am interested in with status of quotes and orders being my most burning issue to solve. Status of quotes, I accept will never be implemented in Manager so I either need to find a way of getting an API to do this or change my accounting program as I cannot manage anymore without this feature. Custom Fields alleviate the problem somewhat but it has never been a satisfactory workaround, so I don’t use Sales Orders yet because I need a status system like the Invoices tab.
is this the sort of stuff you had in mind for your manager tools?.
This is still in development, but I’m finishing off the launch of a different (unrelated) service at the moment - then I’ll switch full gears into working on this.
Also, it’s against the rules to ask/offer hire on these forums, so please keep that in mind as well.
I’ve got to rush off, so I’ll very quickly skim over your message and respond:
Status of invoices, sales orders, etc.
Last I checked, the API does not directly make this accessible, but it provides the information to calculate it, so it’s certainly possible for MTools to show the status - it just wouldn’t be a direct query to the accounting system to ask for it. It is something I wanted to do with MTools.
Solution to link serial numbers from supplier to client.
Anything that requires changes to the user interface in Manager is not possible with the regular REST API. The closest thing would be to reimplement the interface in MTools, which would be far more involved. The other alternative is the plugin system lubos is working on. I’ll need to check if there’s an update on that.
Ability to change colours of Manager
As above, interface changes to Manager are not directly possible with the API.
The status of quotes option won’t work then as I essentially want to make changes to the user interface. I am not sure what you had in mind for doing this with mtools, but what I mean is that I want to open Manager and go to Quotes and see open quotes at the top with the rest below either as successful, closed or whatever. That would require a change to the Gui.
I have spent this entire weekend designing my new custom template for Manager. In the process, I have determined that I need to think about whether I want serial numbers on the sales and purchase invoices or whether I want them on the delivery notes and Goods receipts. However, my new helpdesk for my clients will have the serial numbers for all their hardware. So I will have to think about how I want the serial numbers to work anyway. I am leaning towards using the delivery notes and Goods Receipts but I will have to think about it some more.
From the sounds of it, the main thing that your MTools would be good for is point three and possibly point 5?
