Hi. Been using the cloud version for few months and enjoying every bits of it.
Being in the retail business, i could have diffent type of materials for just one items. In example for a box of business card i can have over 10 type of materials for it with different price. When quoting to a customer this become a problem because the total price sums up from each individual item which happens to be just one item.
Mybe @lubos you could do a tick box for quote with total or without total sum. Or mybe this function is already there but i didnt realise it.
I concur. I very often quote different model laptops or different size Monitors and I don’t want the total to show as its not relevant to the quote as they will be picking one laptop or monitor. So an option to tick a box to not print total would be useful in certain cases. I would imagine that we are not the only people to have such a requirement.
Or shouldn’t there be a new tab called Price Lists
The idea is that you would create a price list and list sales invoice items you want to be on the price list. When viewing a price list, prices would be taken from Sales Invoice Items. So essentially updating prices under sales invoice items would update them across all price lists. You can have just one price list or multiple price lists.
Customer could then submit purchase order to you by “ticking” items they want. There could be mechanism which would allow you to create new invoice (or sales order) from what they ticked off.
I just think this would be a better way to handle this and open door new possibilities. E.g. if your prices change often, price list could have a public link so you could link it from your website and your customers could view it anytime they require. Perhaps even being able to submit purchase order directly into Manager without sending you one manually.
That’s an interesting idea @lubos - in a way that could actually work for my business to have some kind of updated price list although I will have to think about that.
My only concern should something like this be implemented is the fact that you don’t mention inventory items. The bulk of my sales goes through inventory items not through Sales Invoice Items so unless you plan on including inventory items on the price list you are limiting the potential of this feature.
Having said that, just having the ability to remove the total from the quote would actually serve most businesses quite well as very often the client does not need a standard price list but rather a specific list of options (which may differ from client to client).
It important that inventory Items also show up on the price list. If possible the user may set an inventory Kit, inventory item or Sales invoice item to YES or NO with regards to items which can show up during price listing. This will ensure that inventory items meant for internal consumption do not appear among the options for price listings.
The user should also be able to edit the prices on the price listing creation page since different prices for the same items are sent to different customers.
Why on earth are you using Inventory items for internal consumption? Inventory should be for resale not for things like ink toners for your printers or whatever you are using for internal consumption?
I have had time to think about this, and I think that I actually really like the idea of a price list that could be sent out to customers on a periodic basis. So yes I think that this is an excellent idea providing inventory items are includes as well as sales invoice items as a lot of companies like myself would be primarily using inventry items for the bulk of their sales.
I would still recommend that we have an option to create a sales quote without a total as there are many occasions when you want to provide a specific quote for a client with different options on the quote and you may not want to re-use that information so a price list will not be very helpful in that instance. I can speak for myself and I can speak for the OP because having recently dealt with a printing company for my marketing campaign I needed them to provide me with a specific quote with different printing options specific to my job say 1500 prints of the brochure or 500 prints of the brochure etc. The information is too specific to a client for it to be practical to use as a price list.
Thus I think having the functionality for both a price list and the ability to remove the total from a quote would beneficial.
Yes manager currently doesn’t have the option to assign some inventories to a different control account so I don’t have any option if I want to keep supplies as current asset and issue them into an expense account as the supplies are consumed. I use Inventory write-off to issue Inventory to specific expense accounts like stationery, etc. It helps to print out the balances of these items for counting.
When custom control accounts is added to manager those Inventory items consided as supplies will have a different control account under assets as office/operations supplies.
If I have understood you correctly, what you are trying to do is maintain an inventory of what consumables you physically have in stock and you are transferring that to an expense account when start using that consumable say ink toner?
What I was going to suggest was using Purchase Invoice Items so that you can allocate your ink or whatever purchase to the correct expense account, but I see that doing this will prevent you from being aware of what is physically on the shelf waiting to be used. I don’t know how custom control accounts will be implemented but it sounds interesting if it will allow you to be aware of what you have on the shelf waiting to be used and I presume it will allow you to monitor how quickly you go through consumables as I presume that is the main aim.
I had a similar issue some while back when I was thinking of using Manager to track my car expenditure, not just simply to record the purchase of car tyres and shock absorbers but more to be aware of when equipment needed to be replaced so that I didn’t get shocked by huge unexpected bills for my car services.
I came to the conclusion that I should use Manager to record all my purchases from an accounting point of view and that would help me to keep track of how much I spend on the car each year, but I needed to use a different program to track lifespan of parts such as brake pads etc to be able to budget for when I next needed to replace any given item. I bought a program called Kaizen Vehicle Manager 2014 Home Edition Software and I have found it to be really good for tracking my fuel costs as well as mileage performance and putting all my vehicle invoices into the program.
In short, my point is that while Manager is very good, it might be better to use Manager in conjunction with other software to accomplish your task. I doubt that Manager could do what Kaizen Vehicle Manager does without adding extensive functionalilty that is only relevant to cars! I would certainly wait and see how custom controls works before doing anything, but I just think that there are times when a dedicated program would work better than trying to get one program to do everything. Just my opinion.
You are right, it not everything that manager can do, but with all this pressure we are giving Lubos, I hope more functionalities will be added with time. Vehicle management with regards to mileage, fuel consumption etc is a very nice feature for an account app to have. I don’t really know but maybe budget feature can be developed to monitor mileage and expenses if added am sure. He will figure it out, but it will take time. @lubos I suggest you take a look at the Kaizen Vehicle manager and see if you can easily put down some basic features in manager next year.
@Abeiku The point that I am making is not whether something can be included into Manager, but rather should it be included in Manager. I am sure that Lubos could get Manager to make my coffee in the morning, but the question is really what should Manager be designed to do.
Having said, seeing as we already have an inventory within Manager, it already has half the functionality required for your particular request. But that will be for Lubos to decide as it will depend on how many businesses need the ability to record consumable usage. I just don’t want Manager to end up as Quickbooks which has a lot of features - but its downfall is that it actually has too many features and is thus very complicated to use as result.
Well to me the more the features of an appointment the better, I like the fact that in manager the user can activate the modules they want which in turn activates controls in settings e.g. creating an account with a different currency activates multi currency.
Widening the features of manager helps manager to compete well. Manager still lacks some very basic features in Many accounting applications.
What in your view are the lacking basic features in Manager? I do not want to hijack the theme of this post but this could be important for the developers.
I understand what you are saying about adding features to make the program compete with other programs. My point I am trying to say is that there needs to be a roadmap for Manager as well as a clear visions of what Manager should accomplish instead of adding things ad hoc. This is something that the developer needs to think about as in where he wants the program to go and what he wants the program to actually do. Quickbooks can no doubt do everything, but the reason Manager is better than Quickbooks because Manager is dead simple to use whereas Quickbooks you need a Nasa Manual to use!
Basic Budgeting - I will give you that. I would love that in Manager and I think its an essential feature for an Accounting Program.
Job Costing can currently be done with tracking codes, but I agree that the problem with tracking codes is you can use it to track projects or you can track divisions of the company but you cannot do both! However maybe Billable Expenses may be appropriate for your needs - I don’t know because I don’t use that module.
By basic ratios do you mean markups and percentage discounts or what are you referring to here?
Sub Accounts - if you mean like the concept of divisions and job costings - yes I agree - I find problems with other areas as well with this regard - especially keeping track of my delivery charges that I have paid on behalf of a client if I order from multiple suppliers.
Do people still use cheques lol just kidding - Ya I know that people still use it.
@lubos After some discussion with a couple of clients, we have decided that a price list would actually be very useful. I know that you cannot do the module immediately as we have only just thought of the idea, but would you be able to do this before April as that is the start of my contract year for my clients?
By sub accounts i mean sub ledgers, by ratios i mean stuff like current ratio, Debt to equity ratio, Quick ratio, etc
In a third world like where i live, cheques are still very active
As @dalacor was saying, having the ability to remove the total from the quote would actually serve most businesses quite well already. Since quote are daily process in any business. a simply tick box should be just nice for a start. As for now i needed to do an excel or word file when customer asked for different types of material for an item.
The Price Lists tab would be a great addition but i think it can only be realized when your customer is also online, unless the user key in the data themselves. How would this be use when quote are submitted through tender meeting or bidding. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in for this functions to be done just stating my view. The multiple price list for inventory items would be a great help since a company could have multiple tier of end customers with different price range.
The reason i was on manager is because of the simplicity of it. Not much of an accountant i was. The simplicity of manager do helps a lot for me managing my business. The stuff you guys say on sub-ledger, ratios and stuff i don’t understand half of it.
mybe its time for me to get a proper accountant then.
I also see the need for some Sales Quotes without totals. Sometimes, the client wants two or three options to decide from. An option to remove Total from the quote in this situation would serve splendidly.
There is no reason you cannot provide two or three sales quotes then. Quotes have no impact on your accounts. Whichever one they choose can later be converted to a sales order and/or sales invoice.
just kidding - Ya I know that people still use it.
