I am a bookkeeper dealing with several small companies. I have transferred four of them onto Manager without any difficulties but the next one is causing concern. I am due to change the next one on 1st November but nearly all items are recurring with the exception of a few odd purchase invoices. How far in the future are you likely to implement recurring bank payments, and recurring purchase invoices/payments and would it have reminders for the dates due. Thank you
Why do you need recurring purchase invoices? I would assume if some purchases are recurring, then payments are also made automatically on the date the bill is issued therefore you shouldn’t be entering these purchases as purchase invoices but as straight expenses from bank account.
As per recurring payments, wouldn’t it be easier to simply download bank statement regularly and bulk-categorize those transactions?
The point is that I understand why users need recurring sales invoices, that’s why they have been implemented. I don’t fully understand why recurring purchase invoices or recurring bank payments would be useful if there are easier workflows which don’t require this functionality. By not implementing these features, I’m making sure users will follow the right process.
Of course, unless you have convincing use-case that recurring purchase invoices (or bank payments) are useful, then they will be implemented.
It is wrong to assume that recurring purchases are made automatically on the date of the bill - there is not always money available to pay them.
The auditors require the bills entered at ‘Tax Point Date’ so they can see what is outstanding to be paid.
Everything that is ‘invoiced’ is entered under the specific company to provide a history of purchase invoices and payments.
I have no access to bank (am only a bookkeeper) so “recurring payments” would be useful, particularly those that are straight expenses from bank account of which I have a few. (Straight expenses have a till receipt but not an invoice.)
Bulk categorize would not be useful as need to see individual items.
Whether or not you are convinced of it’s usefulness I still need to produce accounts as per auditors request and recurring items would ease my workload.
Even the ability to clone within purchases and bank payments would be useful.
The other companies I have transferred to Manager are sole traders and I am free to organise the accounts but this company is a much larger Limited Company and I have to do as instructed. I currently use TAS Books for them but their year end is 31st October and I would prefer to use Manager.
You can already use Clone button on purchase invoices. Bank payments are not yet cloneable but this week I’m planning to implement View function on receipts and payments and it will contain Clone button.
So starting in November, try to handle recurring purchase invoices and bank payments through clone button. If you feel later it is still inadequate solution, let’s revisit this topic again.
Thanks Lubos. Hadn’t realised purchase invoices had ‘clone’ as haven’t needed to use that tab with other companies but look forward to ‘clone’ on bank receipts and payments. Hope you are able to have this in place by 1st November. Will try it for a month or two and let you know how it’s going.
Bank payments are not yet cloneable but this week I’m planning to implement View function on receipts and payments and it will contain Clone button.
Did this ever end up happening? I would like this feature. It certainly doesn’t look like it is an active feature, unless I’ve missed something completely.
I agree with patchworkfields, that the ability to have repeating purchase invoices is very handy for managing cashflow and direct debit items. While, technically, most of these items are repeating payments (directly debiting the bank account or credit card), people should have the option of how they would like to visualise and manage these transactions. Some may choose to have these items loaded from a bank statement, others may like to add a repeating invoice and then reconcile against the bank statement.
Xero quite happily offers this feature, and I, as well as many others I know, use it.
The point is that I understand why users need recurring sales invoices,
that’s why they have been implemented. I don’t fully understand why
recurring purchase invoices or recurring bank payments would be useful
if there are easier workflows which don’t require this functionality. By
not implementing these features, I’m making sure users will follow the
right process.
That is a really arrogant and dictatorial statement, with little consideration or empathy for the fact that people use software in ways that suit them, perhaps not the way that you think they “should” use it.
Of course, unless you have convincing use-case that recurring purchase
invoices (or bank payments) are useful, then they will be implemented.
Here is my use case:
I have a number of repeating bills that directly debit my account at various intervals, mostly monthly. Too many to remember of the top of my head. I need to make sure I have enough money in said account so that when that debit is made I am not overdrawn (or have enough to make payroll, whatever). Being able to open up Purchase Invoices and see that I am expecting x, y, and z, transactions to debit in so many days will allow me to make financial decisions based on that data. If I were to follow your advice I would have to track this information elsewhere. Since the title of the software is ‘Manager’, and it is accounting software, containing all my financial data, this seems like the most logical place to track that information. Admittedly, I am still new to this software, so there may be some other way of doing this, but you are yet to mention it.
Anyway, that is my two bob. Hopefully you can implement the clone feature to suffice. There should be an option for a repeating bill, though.
Cheers,
Bangers.
I just tried this feature and for me it doesn’t really help me that much. For my purpose I have a number of set recurring transactions that are automatically paid on set dates.
When I use the clone function, yes its simple enough, all I need to do is change the date. But after I have saved it, these transactions are in a suspense account of sorts called “Uncleared”. I then have to select each one in turn, choose Cleared and then enter the date again. To be honest thats taking me about the same time as just clicking Spend Money from bank account and entering all the details manually.
I can understand that some book keepers consider it important that they do it this way to match a bank statement precisely by date, especially if they are cash accounting. But what I would like is just to be able to set and forget. Eg pay $100 1st Monthly x 12 occurrences. Then my diligent bank statement reconciliation will check and correct any issues, and thats the only work I would like to do.
Cheers!
It is useful to have recurring payments because:
- You can look at the summary of all scheduled payments and their dates so you can plan accordingly;
- You can use Manager as a reminder of when payments are due, instead of having to use another tool for keeping track of this information;
- It is a great time saver when you have many recurring payments.
Hope this feature gets implemented and thank you for this great tool!
In Manager, for recurring payments you use Bank Rules and importing bank statements.
I think @delimadlg is suggesting the ability to automatically make payments, not record them.
One potential danger of recurring payments is that they would be only recurring record transactions. You run the risk of thinking you have paid the bill when all you did was record it. A recurring sales invoice is one thing: you generate it but must still do the same thing as you normally would–send it to the customer via some method. A recurring purchase invoice would be similarly benign, telling you money was owed. But a recurring payment record could cause serious trouble.
It would be good to be able to see all upcoming payments by date.
For purchase invoices, you already have that, complete with color coding, under the Purchase Invoices tab. Otherwise, you are asking a computer program to predict a payment you have not made. What you ask for is a calendar, not an accounting function. You would still have to enter the scheduled payments, then go back and enter or confirm the actual payment. Right now, you can clone payments and put future dates on them. Then you wouldn’t have to do anything further. Regardless, you still have the task of actually making the payment.
I have been following this theme through several topics for quite a while now, and I agree that it would be a great improvement in the system to have the ability to load recurring payments for regular expenses.
It would greatly help to do budgeting and cash flow projections from within Manager. These (future) transactions would show up in the summary screen for the period selected and in the Cash Accounts (as pending), and would enable easier planning and cash flow management for any given period.
I would like to suggest the following points:
- When loading a recurring payment, the frequency (weekly/fortnightly/monthly/quarterly/annually), start date (and optional end date, or number of payments) should be entered.
- An expected (budgeted) amount should be entered, which can be changed either per transaction as it is cleared (real-time), or adjusted for the remaining future payments.
- All future payments should default to “Pending” transactions, which can then be cleared when reconciling bank statements, or when payment is actually made. When marking the transaction as cleared, one should be able to change the amount of that particular entry. (Some recurring payments vary slightly from month to month.)
- The transaction should be applicable for monthly charges, eg rent, utilities etc, as well as paying off an account with a balance over a specified period.
Manager is an already brilliant and intuitive system and I am of the opinion that including this feature would only enhance the features and expand the scope of usage for all.
These can occur now with some modification. Using Rent as an example.
You can load the next 12 months of expenses by using the clone feature, but instead of using cash accounts pending you would use a Liability - Rent Clearing account, so the cash account remains reconcilable based on actual transactions rather then cluttered with pending transactions which may or may not happen.
Now you can expand that rent model to all regular expenses, but instead of individual clearing accounts you would group them into Liabilities - Regular Expenses Clearing.
In fact, any income and expense can be model depending on the detail required. By creating the P&L Report for the year by monthly columns would be the basis for cash flow projections.
Also, only transactions within the Summary tab date parameters would be included in that report.
With regards to your points(
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- that frequency would bring a lot of clutter to Manger. In a previous life I have used such features in an accounting package but can now do the same in Manager with cloning & bank rules
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A Budgeting feature is on the roadmap and many of us are patiently waiting for it. That alone would enable better cash flow management rather then the creation of cash accounts pending transactions.