Hi @lubos I am aware that you are overhauling the quotes-orders-invoices system as you have mentioned in a few topics that you want to introduce other features to streamline the process. I think that you indicated that it would be a few months before you rolled out the changes.
I was just wondering if it would be possible to implement a short term fix to status of quotes/orders as this would address the biggest issue with the quoting/ordering/sales process as its easy to loose track of things if we cannot tick off completed quotes/orders etc. The program works brilliantly for me, apart from this area of lack of status of quotes and orders.
Or do you have any timescale when your overhaul of the quotes-orders system will be implemented. If its only going to be two months, then its ok to wait, but if its going to be six months, perhaps a short term fix for status?
I was also wondering whether it would be possible to add to the summary screen the option to view expected expenditure and expected income - deriving that from sales orders and purchase orders. Obviously this will only work once you have completed the status of quotes/orders because the summary page should only reflect open orders, not closed orders.
I very often put things onto a purchase order because I am not going to be paying for it immediately or within 30 days as I have not actually placed the order with the suppliers, but the summary page does not reflect this expected expenditure. From a cash flow point of view it would be very useful to be aware of how much money needs to be made available for future orders that have been placed in purchase orders. Also to be aware of future income that has been put onto a sales order, but has not been invoiced.
I realise that sales and purchase orders are internal documents and nothing to do with accounting in terms of financial transactions, therefore you don’t want these form part of the accounts, but having an expected expenditure and expected income on the summary page should not intefere with the actual book-keeping per se - it would merely track cash flow.
I always try to implement functionality in stages if possible. This way I can release partial solution quicker. Then build on top of it. But in order to do this, I need to understand 100% where I’m taking the feature in long-term.
The reason why I didn’t implement statuses yet is because honestly I didn’t put much thought into it. And also because there are many conflicting feature requests regarding how statuses ought to work. Some people want simple system to mark quotes, orders etc as complete/pending. Others need ability to mark orders as partially fulfilled. And others want to link all documents into workflows/jobs so they can monitor overall progress and perhaps run some reports on them.
So I still need to think of the concept that will be simple to start with but at the same time will be flexible to cater for more advanced requirements. I’m sure I will come up with good solution once I’ll dive into it. And once I know the solution, the first usable bits and pieces of the feature will appear within days.
Thank you. I do understand exactly where you are coming from. You need to be able to scale the system, rather than constantly undoing what you have previously done to implement new features to the module.
I think most people would want something like open, successful sale, lost business and not required (for quotes that have to be redone with different products). By default, quotes and sales and purchase orders should only show anything that is open. There could be a drop down arrow to select view successful sale or lost business etc statuses.
When a quote has been converted to a sales order or sales invoice, the quote should be closed with successful sale as the status. Same principle with Purchase Orders to Purchase Invoices. This would be the way the workflow should work for proceeding from a quote to sales order to sales invoice.
for those that want to run reports and I can only assume that they would want to review ratio of successful quotes to sales versus lost business and what clients are turning away business etc. The status of the quote combined with the client would be the only info that is required I would imagine.
I think also the concept of tracking codes for divisions and tracking codes for projects as mentioned in several other topics might have some effect on the reporting options. But as long as the tracking codes are on the quotes/purchase orders etc, I don’t think that this would affect the issue of statuses of quotes etc.
Hopefully something there helps you visualise one concept of the status of quotes and orders. As you say everyone has different wants, so its difficult to implement, but I think everyone could agree that basic statuses such as open, completed sale, lost sale and quote being revised type of statuses would apply for everyone and converting to a sales order or sales invoice by defintion would mean successful quote or successful sale. The exact names are irrelevant as long as everyone knows what they mean. I will just create a little spreadsheet to keep track of what is open and closed for the moment as I am losing track already.
Hi @lubos. Being relatively new to the software, I would like to say I’m impressed with what you guys have done.
I think there are 2 issues here,
1 - being able to Invoice the same Sales Order multiple times
2 - Not invoicing a Sales Order (which is possibly worse than above)
Just something simply such as “Delivery Docket Printed”, “Partially Invoiced”, “Completed” would get most of us through
It may be a great deal of work, but if a Transaction list by S.O. was available would be excellent. This way all “In’s & Out’s” are displayed.
In the meantime excellent work with the package
Cheers
Hi All, Just been playing with Manager a bit more and possibly this is a workaround for some of the things that I do in my business.
Enter Sales Quote as per normal. If Quote is successful, make notation in the “Quote Summary Field”. I use a Date format of yy/mm/dd - Quote Number. This then transfers to other Sales functions. If viewing on the Sales Quotes summary page, this value is displayed under the “Description” column. Therefore if no Description is available, the quote is “Pending”. Update as required. Using this date format also gives an indication of when Quote was accepted.
Raising a Sales Order from the Quote. Using the “Copy to Sales Order” function, transfers this number as well. I use this as a point of reference for searching.
Raising Sales Order without a Quote. Again I find the same format works for me except using the format of SO yy/mm/dd. I can determine if the Sales Order was generated from a Quote or directly entered
Using the “Copy To” - New Sales Invoice, New PO, New Purchase Invoice, carries this number across as well.
Purchase Order Receipting. When receipting a PO, I use the “Reference” Field to indicate whether the Order is Partially or Completely supplied. This shows in the Purchase Invoice Summary screen under the # column. I can easily see if there are any items outstanding. When running the Supplier Statement, the Invoice number and Status is displayed.
Now I’m not sure if I am actually doing this all correctly, but it does give a reference point for what I want to do. Anything else that requires a bit more searching, I feel may be better in Excel.
Possibly a little tidying up of the descriptions could be improved, eg Quote Summary on document = Description on the summary page. If there was a auto generated tracking number or Field for such (Int Ref) would be handy.
Hope this helps & haven’t lead you up a garden path
Cheers
What I am going to do for the time being is simply print out all my quotes and split them into two piles. I will mark all the ones that have been converted to orders/invoices as successful and mark the others as pending and throw away the others that are unsuccessful.
Same procedure with sales orders and purchase orders. This is the only way that I will easily be able to see what quotes are pending, what I need to order, what I need to invoice etc.
I prefer printing them out than editing them as you have done because I would then have to go back and remove all the editing at a later stage.
This is my busiest time of year so its proving difficult to keep track of the statuses of quotes, orders and invoices, so I am hoping that printing out all my quotes etc and having different trays will help me to track what is open, closed etc. Hopefully the new statuses update will come soon.
In the latest version I’ve added ability to make custom fields on sales quotes to be shown as columns on list of quotes.
This is general purpose feature which could be used to implement simple statuses.
Simply add new custom field for sales quote called Status, set default value such as Pending or something like that. And make sure to check Show as a column under the tab.
Your “statuses” will be shown on list of sales quotes.
Perhaps I could improve custom fields to support dropdown lists with pre-configured values too.
Its not a problem. I will just wait until you are ready to implement the status programming into the program. For me the concept of statuses would be to by default only see open orders (sales and purchases) and open quotes. Anything else by default would be hidden, but with the option to view by selecting drop down filter to view closed quotes, unsuccessful quotes etc. I will just print the quotes out so that I can see immediately what is open by looking at the printed pile of open quotes.
Your suggestion does not really address that issue as I still have to go through each quote to see if its open or closed, pending or whatever
@lubos thank you this is a good idea. It would be great to also have the drop down.
@dalacor if you do as Lubos has suggested then if you only wished to see the open quotes (if that’s what you named your status in your custom field) just type open in the search box then you will see only open quotes. Same goes for converted and closed searches.
You have to manually change the status but it’s a good start.
