Suggestion: Automatic Purchase Invoice numbering

[Ealfardan]

@Tut

@whereskarlo

Can automatic numbering be added to Purchase Invoices please?

Purchase invoice numbers are meant to be taken from your suppliers’ sales invoice numbers. A purchase invoice number assigned by your accounting system would be meaningless when dealing with a supplier.

@whereskarlo

Can numbers be added to purchase invoices retrospectively to make this system function?

No. Past transactions are not modified by program changes. That could seriously disrupt your records.

The recent change to how overpayments are handled did not remove a capability, it added one. If you leave the invoice number blank on either a sales or purchase invoice, Manager will allocate overpayments to other unpaid invoices for that supplier or customer, just as it did before. Any payment in excess of the total amount receivable or payable will go to a contra balance for that customer’s or supplier’s subaccount in Accounts receivable or Accounts payable. This is explained in these two Guides:

Manager Guides
Manager Guides

Yes the purchase invoice comes from the supplier which should NOT be my transaction reference number anyway.

The main reference number used should be a system generated purchase voucher number which is unique and serialized UNLIKE supplier invoice number which are erratic and have gaps in them.

This is helpful for the following reasons:

1. Ensure each number is used for 1 transaction only.
2. Ensure effective audit trial over deletions since the gaps in numbers means something was deleted.
3. Because of (1) & (2), this enables proper physical filing based on unique and serialized number which in turn makes physical document retrieval effective and efficient.

Additionally, supplier invoice numbers should also be maintained as SECONDARY references for the following reasons:

1. To identify duplicate supplier invoices (we cannot enforce this because some suppliers will give duplicate numbers, but we need to know anyways … not everyone is organized)
2. To enable reconciliation with supplier Statement of Account.

And in case you were thinking of it, no we cannot use alternative numbers such as PO number because:

1. Not all purchases are made using a PO (remember your target client base are SMEs)
2. POs can be cancelled and thus leaving gaps that are not necessary.

Right now I am using system generated number for purchase transactions and keeping supplier invoice reference in the description which is not ideal but it is a workaround. I also do this for receipts & payments for bank reference #.

[Edit] I just remembered that Manager allows custom fields, which makes my workaround stupid. I am now making a custom field called supplier reference.