Showing non quantity transactions within quantity only listings

1

I am going through one of my inventory items to check that it is accurate.

While doing so I noticed that there are 3 transactions called “purchase invoice” with the description “freight-in” for each invoice.

There is a goods receipt for each invoice, showing the increased inventory, why am i also showing the purchase invoice in this screen? And why specifically for the shipping charges, which have nothing to do with the item quantity. I would expect only transactions affecting the quantity at hand to be listed here.

I assume it is something I did somewhere, any help would be great.

2

You need to upload screen shots illustrating what you are talking about. Load the inventory items list (or portion of it showing the item in question), and at least one of the purchase invoices you are asking about. (Show the Edit screen.)

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Sorry about the size. I also checked in every one of my inventory items in which goods were received from an invoice that had a freight in charge. This is really useless for me to see in this screen. Also, you notice there are only 2 freight-in charges, yet 3 or more invoice related transactions.

6

I suspect that Manager is showing all the transactions which relate to the Inventory Item regardless of the column (Qty on hand in this case) being viewed, but only uses the data that is related, hence the Purchase Invoice / Freight-in entries having zero quantity.

For the Invoice shown (2/2/2015 - D0002) there is only one Purchase Invoice / Freight-in entry being shown in the listing, so this appears to be correct. So you would need to show the edit screen for Invoice D0001 to be able to compare that against the multiple entries in the listing.

Not at all, you are just getting “full” instead of “partial” disclosure. I concur that it may be cluttering the screen for your purposes, but for others they may find that detail of benefit.

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It would be more helpful to post the correct invoice… sorry.

You can see there are 2 freight-in charges on this. But 3 entries in inventory.

As far as usefulness, I can’t guess at other peoples uses, but this is the wrong spot to show this information. Even if someone can find it helpful, a breakdown of item transactions is not the place to show non item transaction no matter how you look at it. If a person needs that information, they can simply view/edit the goods receipt or go to the properly located purchase invoice section.

We are only just beginning to grow as a company and these purchases will happen more frequently, meaning while it is merely inconvenient now it will become a flood of useless improperly located information later.

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If your screenshot transaction listing refers to Inventory Item HNY-7 Clover, then I suspect the additional entry may have something to do with there being two entries of that inventory item on the purchase invoice and with the second entry being with a negative quantity and zero unit price. If you deleted that line what changes occur ?

Yes, but the Inventory Item is the starting point for that trace back. If you have 20 goods receipts and 20 purchase invoices for an inventory item, you don’t want to start searching each one by one.

Again I concur with your expressed sentiments, however, as you gain confidence with Manager then perhaps you wont need to be “going through one of my inventory items to check that it is accurate”.

9

The inventory item I show is the Alfalfa, not the clover. Clover was also purchased in this invoice. I should have mentioned the inventory item screen shown was the Alfalfa.

Also, this issue is on at least 11 different inventory items. Many of which are not in the same invoices as one another. It also happens every time there is an invoice with a freight-in charge.

Again, why would anyone ever go to inventory to find a shipping charge? That is not the starting point if you were looking to find a shipping charge, you would start with the invoice, always and forever. Inventory item window is for tracking quantities, which a shipping charge is not. As you can see, it has a 0 quantity, meaning Manager is trying to track it as an item. It is however part of the COGS, which is not a part of the inventory transactions and cannot be found in the item transactions window. You can find COGS in the inventory menu, adjacent to the quantity field, but they are two different things.

As far as the gaining confidence with Manager, the accuracy check is related to the actual use of the items, not the record in Manager which was accurate (simple math). I was updating Manager to reflect actual usage, which is not the purpose of this topic.

10

That is your answer, it appears to be part of how the Freight-in process functions.
As another user, there is nothing more I can add then that.

11

@Jeff_Kesling, I think you are misunderstanding the list you see when drilling down on a quantity in the Inventory Items tab. The register shows every transaction that could affect the quantity being shown, not just transactions that actually did. In other words, Manager does not test the transactions before including them.

This is because different users, with different tabs enabled (such as goods receipts and delivery notes), actually see different columns in the Inventory Items tab view, so some have more detailed information than others. And the figures contributing to each column also vary depending on which tabs are enabled. Thus, both display format and formulas for content are adaptive, according to which capabilities of Manager are in use.

In the case of a Freight-in charge, the quantity movement just happens to be zero. So that particular line may not affect the quantity you are viewing. But it was still a valid transaction, and any transaction could involve a quantity or be used in a calculation for one or more possible configurations of the program. So everything gets included.

12

The issue is the way you are entering the items. The invoice is correct and is showing you what was charged. The two freight charges on one invoice is common when pallets are involved. The freight is showing up in inventory, because it has no place to go other than to default to inventory. You need to tell it it where it should be accounted for. You will see in the other items under account they are marked for inventory on hand. You need to do the same for the freight charge.
Example of what I do.
I do not mark up my freight charge but I do pass it on to the customer. So I created an account under sales marked expenses billable. When I input the invoice I mark the items to inventory and any freight, handling or tax lines go to the billable account. This way they do not appear in the inventory list at all.

Now how you account for freight is up to you, this is just what I do. You can bill it out. You can take it as an expense charge, you can also add it into your inventory items as an average across all items on that invoice.
No matter how you do it you need to identify an account for it to go pr it will keep getting placed in the inventory through the clone process you are using.

I hope that helps and maybe someone more experienced could explain it better.

13

My problem with this is that I am mistakenly applying logic to this drilled down items tab. Ignoring for a moment the increased number of transactions being referenced as “freight-in” than the original invoice, I do not see any reason to include a shipping charge in a quantity field. Also, please explain to me how the non-quantity freight-in affects the actual quantity of the item.

I believe you are the person who made the topic about freight-in being a shipping specific item so that COGS could be calculated using shipping costs.

Please provide a real example of a use for this to be listed under an individual items transaction list. Again, it is NOT affecting that item in a physical way. It IS affecting the price of the item, which is shown in a different area.

Again, if I have an invoice showing 100 screws, 100 nails and $20 shipping, only the 100 nails should be tracked in the quantity of nails. Yes, shipping charges are applied to the cost per nail, I get that, but why in the world are they then applied to the quantity of nails? and why more times then actual transactions? You are not answering the questions, just pointing out that the program may have a glitch and that there may be someone out there who uses the glitch.

Side note, in my larger invoices in which I purchased 6 or more items, there are still 3 transactions listed as freight-in when the invoice shows only 2.

I like manager, but every time I have pointed out something the answer is always some form of “working as intended, deal with it” despite my concerns pertaining to real use of the software and QoL. I could just ignore this issue sure, but it shouldn’t exist. If there is some related feature that you are pointing out, that should do this function, they should not be tied together forcing me to deal with it. I am willing to pay for the use of this product, but I keep waiting for the updates that actually make it worth money. Most updates lately are about currency or taxes, rarely about QoL and never seeming to be actual features (like customer tracking using transactions, or reports). Aim to be better than the competition, beat them at their game.

For those who wish to point out I could switch, currently Manager has a better production/inventory functionality than most of the competition, hence why I even care enough to post this stuff.

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You shouldn’t be forced to create a work around for this stuff. It should be an option in the software.

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It doesn’t, and I didn’t say it did. I just said that all transactions affecting an inventory item got swept up, whether or not the quantity movement was non-zero.

I’m not sure what you are referring to here. Can you clarify?

Your own example is as good as any. I did not say the information would necessarily be useful. I just explained why it is there. Through this entire thread, you have been complaining that entries you don’t find useful are present. But they are. I can’t do anything about that. I’m a forum moderator, not the developer. I don’t make decisions about what features are added, changed, or deleted. I’m just a user like you, trying to help others understand the program.

Unless you plan to switch to server or cloud editions, you will have a long wait. Manager isn’t some beta test project gathering feedback before charging customers. The desktop edition is free and will remain so.

16

How would one go about talking to a dev then, this issue feels more like a bug then a feature. Considering everything everyone including you have said so far seem to be trying to justify the existence of this issue rather then suggesting it may be a mistake.

You said all transactions affecting an inventory item “got swept up”. Herein lies my problem, the transaction does not affect the item. it affects an attribute of the item (price) but is listed in the location you should only find a different attribute (quantity).

While I may be wrong, this just feels like a bug that should probably be fixed. And once again, the point about having 3 entries is being missed. More then my opinion alone, this triple entry seems like the biggest indicator of a bug.

As to the point of clarifying my statement about the freight-in topic: I saw this when I did a search to be sure this issue wasn’t previously discussed prior to my posting it. I saw your explanation on freight-in to another user. I just searched the forum for freight-in.

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The developer reads the forum.

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This is a contradiction, if the transaction affects the attribute of an item (say price or quantity) then it must also affect the item.

I think what you meant to say was this: the Freight-in transaction does not affect the item quantity, it only affects an attribute of the item (price) - which is correct.

The problem seems to be this, you are having an issue in seeing non-quantity transactions being listed amongst a drill down on an item’s quantity attribute based on “I am mistakenly applying logic”. Perception of a “should be” appearance doesn’t indicate a bug, besides there are thousands upon thousands of Manager Inventory users and (from memory) you are the first to raise this quantity display listing issue.

For the record I concur, but then I don’t have any knowledge of the programming mechanics and processors occurring in the background. Perhaps a filter could be applied ?
Anyhow, currently its “working as intended” - “all transactions affecting an inventory item are swept up”

No its not, it just that its a separate issue, albeit that you think they wouldn’t be there at all.

It does appear on the surface that the processing / handling of Freight-in under certain circumstances (D0001 v’s D0002) is creating additional unnecessary entries. If this is a bug (causing errors) or programming that needs tightening up is beyond my call. Perhaps this should be the subject of a separate topic.

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Further to what @Brucanna said, @Jeff_Kesling, no one who has participated in this discussion knows anything about how the application is actually programmed. We know how it behaves. And we integrate that with various comments by the developer made in release notes, responses in the forum, and so forth. For all any of us know, there could be 15 transactions/calculations going on behind the scenes for one purchase invoice. You apparently believe there should be only one transaction reported. While that is intuitively appealing, it is not the way the program’s logic seems to work. What matters to most of us is whether the numbers are correct, not what method was used to derive them. If the numbers are wrong, that’s a bug. If presentation of data differs from what you wish it were, that’s a feature.