Start date

Today,2022-02-25 I opened a new company with the intention to enter transactions starting from January 1 this year.
There is no way to enter a start date and Manager only accepts transactions as per today and no transactions with a date in the recent past.
Who can help me out.

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Using the version 22.1.45, I created a new company

I set the date on the Summary page to 01.01.2022 to today

and was able to enter receipts dated

and invoices


I wonder does the accrual/cash setting in Summary Edit affect this?

True, but the current starting balances scheme no longer requires it.

Like @Joe91, I am unable to reproduce such a problem.

According to my test with a new business, no.

@Hennie, I recommend reinstalling. Perhaps a file was corrupted?

I can not replicate your issues, I can enter transactions earlier than today.Maybe you can explain better what you are doing and also the version of Manager you are using.

I also can’t replicate the problem, but I speculate maybe you’ve entered lock date in place of start date.

I also find the lack of a start date confusing. I think start dates should be thought over, at least to allow users to skip the date field in reports, otherwise users will have to search initial balance sheet report and if it’s gone then all hope is lost.

I disagree, @Ealfardan. Hope is not lost. Any report can be recreated.

It’s not the report, it’s the date. If you lose the report you lose the date.

According to the current setup, even if you go back to reports predating the intended start date, starting balances would still appear. So that’s not helping either.

I am sorry, @Ealfardan. I do not understand what you are saying. What do you mean by “you lose the date?”

I was on version 2022.1.26 and I just updated to version 22.1.52
I deleted the company and I recreated the company.
I have setup that business in excatly the same way and now it is possible to enter transactions from the past.
Problem solved without me having any idea what has caused my problem.
Thanks all for your help.

Kind regards,

Hennie.

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This piece of information is nowhere to be found in Manager. One would think that an accounting system would keep track of it’s most important cut-off date.

I have said this before, the start date should be stored in the system, even if it’s there for namesake only.

The system does not store any start date because it has no use for one. It is not a cut-off date, whether important or inconsequential. I am puzzled by your attachment to something that would be meaningless to the software, even if it were stored.

But I do have a use for it. I work on multiple clients many of which have been migrated from other software at different times. I can’t keep track of all their starting dates in my head and I can’t check on the previous accounting systems because their subscriptions expired.

I don’t want to dig through my archives or restart a previously ended subscription just to get the info. I also don’t have time to audit the transactions in Manager just to get the date.

It’s a single piece of information that I should be able to lookup directly without any wasted efforts.

To achieve that, I have made two attempts but each had it’s flaws:

  1. Use a balance sheet report labeled starting balances. This seemed to work like a charm at first until some users started repurposing the report either retitling it or changing the dates or just simply deleting it. So I locked users from updating or deleting balance sheet reports which resulted in the report list being ridiculously long.

  2. I used a custom field in business details for each business with starting date in it. I later faced the same problem because the clients have access to their business details so they can update their info and they started changing it. This is an even bigger problem than using a report because I have no idea that the date is wrong without some serious history digging. Even worse, if a date is right there, why would I suspect that it is wrong to begin with?

I need to be able to store this basic piece of information in Manager and I need to safeguard it and also access it immediately without wasting any time.

Idk why keeping one more static parameter in the database proves to be such a bummer for the developer – especially with so many users confused by the lack of it. That is a real head scratcher for me. :thinking:

@Tut I also just remembered that I have been thinking about manually splitting Manager business files for archiving purposes and also to protect previously closed periods from any later changes.

I haven’t done it yet but I think I proposed it once before and I am planning to do it even if the functionality doesn’t make it to Manager, I’ll still do it manually because I can’t afford to keep such a long period of records exposed to future program changes.

Then every business will have multiple starting dates and I’ll have to keep track of each and every one of those. :weary:

But I kinda get the feeling that it’s only me that’s feeling sorry for myself. :grin:

I think perhaps you are right. I honestly cannot remember another complaint about the lack of a start date. Yes, there have been some questions about how to enter one, but from the point of view that surely they must be necessary. Once informed they are no longer needed, I don’t think anyone but you has complained.

I also need to point out that your stories about balance sheet reports and custom fields being sabotaged by careless or malicious users do not seem persuasive. The very same thing could happen with a start date.

You have been a forum member long enough to remember all the problems we used to see that were traced to start dates users did not remember they had entered.

If you can recall, start date was a separate setting and while I absolutely need to give users the permissions to update and delete reports and business details, I used to be able to deny permissions to restricted users for start date under the previous setup.

Yes I do. I also recall that the solution to all of those was to make transactions before start date visible and that was done. But, completely discarding start dates was an overcorrection imo.

I guess the developer saw only one use in start dates and that’s to filter tabs (I can go on forever on why that’s not right, but I’ll spare everybody from having to read all that) and he refuses to acknowledge any other use regardless of the case being laid out.

My thinking was to just keep a record of the start date. Think of it as a birthday if you will: it has no bearing on anything but it’s still nice to remember. @Tut, what’s the cost of doing just that?

Obviously, the immediate cost is small. But where do you stop implementing tiny features, each for one user? As you know, the decision is not mine.

@Ealfardan I tried to understand your main issue, i.e.

Then every business will have multiple starting dates and I’ll have to keep track of each and every one of those

I am wondering if you keep a separate clients’ record or invoice them for your services and keep record of that. This would at least inform you when the start date of engagement with your client was and hopefully this is kept in secured and triple backed-up environments.

I found start date an arbitrary function in Manager that gladly was regarded as it is… superfluous.

That’s one way of doing it except that:

  1. Engagement start doesn’t equate to accounting records start most of the time, unfortunately.

  2. It’s true that it’s secured but it’s not as convenient or as quickly accessible as keeping each set of records (business file) with it’s own set of descriptive information.

  3. I can only imagine if I had to dig up each tiny piece of client details from my own records how difficult my life would be. The alternative is to lock users from editing business details and be the bottle neck everytime a client wants to change their name or address.

I conceded this debate a few times before since not enough users find that to be a problem, which boggles me. I only tried to revive the discussion this time since the OP is in the same ballpark as my original issue.

Anyway, it seems like @Hennie has a different problem than mine so I think it’s time for me to run away and live to fight another day. :wink:

@Ealfardan from your message I can only conclude that you do not keep client records outside of Manager. I do not think it helpful to speculate on @Hennie nor does it fit this discussion.

@eko I’m not speculating, this was in the OP.

Also, I’m not sure where you got this impression:

I keep my accounts and my client’s accounts in Manager. But that doesn’t mean that I store all my client info in custom fields in my own business file. Despite Manager being customizable and all but it’s not structured in way to be a CRM. Creating a flat CRM database in customers tab is too much work to be useful. For one, you can’t store contact information, that job is better done elsewhere like your email client which integrates nicely with tasks, meetings, calendar … etc.

Back to orbit, what I originally meant was for each business, I want the start date to be stored inside that particular business file – just like the good old days.