I have just started using Manager for my IT Service business as of this month, and I am hoping to continue using it, as I find it very good. It is a bit more complex and time consuming that my old software, (Cashflow Manager) however it has lots more features that I think make up for this. (I also tried Xero and hated it, partially becuase of my slow, unreliable internet connections, but I also had major issues with bank feeds, one of my main reasons for using it).
So well done to all involved in making and supporting Manager.
I see that the roadmap says that there is a job tracking feature coming soon - is there any info somewhere that I cant see about what this will actually allow? - This would be a great feature for me.
I basically want to be able to create a job which is assigned to a customer. This job keeps track of all labour and parts used, and can be converted into an invoice, then the job closed.
Is that roughly what is planned?
Any Ideas on a timeframe? I am not meaning to rush Lubos, I greatly appreciate his effort in giving us this fabulous software for free, I am just trying to plan stuff for my business, and may continue to persist with other job tracking software if this is going to be a long time off or unsuitable.
Have you looked at Billable Time and Billable Expenses modules? Read about them in the Guides and experiment with a test business. Based on what you have said, this will meet your needs. Job tracking would only be required if you have further requirements or want to analyze profitability by job after the fact.
These will partially work for my needs, however a Billable Expense cannot (as far as I can see) be an item from the inventory.
This means that (as far as i can see), there is no means to record the use of an inventory item against a customer until making an invoice, which will mean I have to remember them or record it elsewhere.
In order to make this meet my needs, I think I need some way to record an inventory item against a customer prior to the invoice being created.
Alternatively, some way of creating an invoice, setting it as not being due yet, and then being able to add billable time and expenses to it.
You seem to understand everything. Billable time and expenses can only be invoiced from the Customers tab. Other things can then be added. Billable time and expenses cannot be added to a sales invoice created in the Sales Invoices tab.
But needing to remember things to invoice isn’t unique to Manager. There must always be a method for transferring information on expenditures of time and materials and the consumption of inventory to the accounting function. Remember, no matter how advanced an accounting system is, it doesn’t perform transactions, it records them.
I guess what I am hoping the Job Tracking feature will do is go beyond accounting and keep track of records about what work was done for the job etc, something like a very basic version of ServiceM8 or Tradify.
But I do understand if that is considered to be out of the scope of a program like Manager.
I’m not sure you are describing what your plan is in the same terms used by the program. So I may not be understanding you. For example:
At the point where you have sold an inventory item, it’s sold. That means you have either entered a cash receipt or sales invoice. So that inventory item won’t be in your inventory any longer at any location.
But maybe you are only talking of committing items to a customer. In that case, putting the customer’s name in the description will let you see it in the listing of inventory transfers. Then you can actually sell it from that location. That will work as a reminder. But there will be nothing to tell you that inventory is unavailable to sell to other customers in the meanwhile. Manager will let you sell inventory no matter where it is. It’s up to you to get the inventory where it needs to be.
In fact, you can sell inventory you don’t even own yet. (Some companies work that way, only ordering items after a customer buys them, especially expensive or customized goods they will have trouble selling to others.) So this method will only work at very low volumes where you can mentally keep track of what’s at the new location versus what you have available to sell to others. But in that case, it would probably be less work to just keep a list of what you’ve used on a job and enter it directly on a sales invoice.
This seems like a case where the workaround costs you more effort than it saves.
OK Tut I have thought about it more, and have been using the program quite a bit, and decided that you are correct.
I have thought of a way of dealing with this that I think would work great, and would presumably only require a fairly small change to the program - then again, i am not familiar with the code, i realize it could be quite a bit more tricky.
What I would like (so a feature request, please) is a way of marking an invoice finalized or not-finalized. (Or Ready / Not Ready). Perhaps they should be finalized by default so as not to interrupt the current workflow for most users, or maybe this could be configurable in the settings.
My proposed workflow would be to create an invoice when the job is started, mark it as not finalized, and keep editing the invoice until the job is finished, and then mark the invoice as finalized, and send it.
Ideally this finalization status would be displayed on the “Sales Invoices” page.
