Being a long term and paying user of Manager (which I love so much!) I have to make big complaints about the direction that the updating of the software has taken in the last few weeks.
First of all we lost, without warning (and apparent reason), all the old custom reports without the possibility to convert them and/or to recreate all of them with the new improved reporting tool due to the lack of coverage of all the functionalities of the previous old one: I refer in particular to the impossibility to create reports of tables not linked to a general ledger transaction that was possible in the past; the solution was promised in a week or two but it never seen the light.
Secondly, today, I discovered, without notice, that I have been disabled to web access to the Italian Tax localisation “portal” in which I have spent hours, for free, to classify all the italian taxes (VAT) with all the necessary custom fields required by law, that, as you can see, are not two or three:
Third, after last update, without notice, I also see that I cannot export my settings anymore and that I can import settings only from online. This vanished the possibility to keep my settings in sync through my different businesses. I would like to point out that not all customizations are born to be shared via the internet for two main reasons: they are very specific for a type of business and, mainly, they constitute corporate know-how that one may not want to share but to sell as a service.
I cannot find a plausible justification for this update mode. They seem more like a series of blind attempts on the skin of the users.
I want to specify that the intent of this post is not controversial but to open a dialogue between @lubos and the users of Manager, especially for the paying ones who plan their business on the basis of software features that too often disappear or changes without a valid replacement, justification and notice.
My company manages many different Investment Fund (a business for each one) and, for reporting we make an extensive use of custom fields. So every time we add/update a custom field in one business we share it to other businesses by export and import. Same for the creation of a new business.
Same thing for Italian tax codes which are kept in sync this way given also the fact that Manager is not always update.
OK. For your use case, Export settings button would break sooner or later anyway because you are relying on specific scope of what should be included in the export. In the end, Batch update button can serve the same purpose. Right now Batch update button is not available for Tax Codes and Custom Fields but that is going to change soon. You have quite a few feature requests posted in Ideas category. Ultimately, everything I do is moving closer to implementing these ideas but it needs to be done the right way. Sometime I need to take one step back in order to take two steps forward. It’s short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain.
Thanks for your work. As I said I love the direction Manager it is developing to, but I have to face my business exigencies and timing.
I think that batch create/update everywhere can work but how would you face the need to have the same UUID around Manager for sharing custom reports in different Businesses? Are you planning to add the possibility to share custom reports via batch create/update? If so, how would you link with custom reports if they have different UUID in different Businesses?
Not sure how it works now but the idea is that if you do batch update and source of data is from another business, then Manager would create these objects with specificed UUID rather than ignoring it.
This is basically, how Import / Export button used to work. So you would end up with the same UUIDs across businesses.
Imo change is good.
The functionality being rapidly added now is making Manager a much better product.
Changes to a production system does need to be done in a controlled manner though. Which is why I run a current version on Manager on a test machine and an older version for my current business records, only updating at a time convenient to me and when I’m confident the newer version will perform functions I will use in the near term.
Do not misunderstand me… I already said that love the new implementation of Custom Reports. I’ve already created many reports I was not able before.
What I was complaining was the fact that we are treated like “guinea pigs” and with the last updates we lost implementations that took hours without a migration tool or at least notice.
We are server users so you can say it was our fault to update before testing the new environment… but think about cloud users. We are talking about business not home accounting: one can miss an important/fiscal deadline. I think that in the future there should be more reasoning on the impact before removing a functionality.
All that said I’m very satisfied with the answer @lubos gave me.
Manager has a rapid update cycle. The advantage is it is rapidly improving. The disadvantage is it is rapidly changing.
Manager has added the ability to edit (see the definition) of old custom reports.
Old versions of Manger are available here if required (but down grading is discourages as it involves loosing data added since your backup on the old version)
I’m not sure what more a general software development firm could do.
I invite you to read all my discussions and not to focus only to custom reports. I can give you justifications to all your clarification requests about my upgrades but that’s not the focus of my thread.
This was a complain about an usual and general behaviour of Manager upgrade that created problems to many users many times. And, as I already said, I’m fully satisfied with the solutions that were proposed that hopefully will not take so long since some were proposed one month ago.
The scope of my discussion is about how this behaviour can be changed for the future. Deliberately delete data and function without notice is not a solution under my point of view.
I also invite you not to give “strange” solutions. Loosing data of days and going back to an older version should not be taken into consideration since, by the way, it is also illegal.
It is the best way to test a new custom report against the custom report a user wrote in the past in the old custom report writer. It is what I did and believe other would find most efficient for this task.
However old versions of Manager software are not advertised, which I also support for exactly the reason we have both highlighted.
Btw
I also support localisation import and export
Using batch update is functional but not as refined
You are right, I didn’t thought of this. If possible, since not all old reports can be done with the new tool, done this way it can be a big support to recreate the report.
I think that all settings, even the whole chart of accounts should be exportable this way. And I would extend this functionality a little further. One should be able to choose what to import/export with a checkable list of all the settings’ areas.
Agree
The use case is Manager businesses can have more in common with other businesses than just what country they are practicing in and the official Manager localisation reports.
For example forum users often request guidance on how to setup
Real estate sales
Real estate rental
Internet sales
Self managed super fund
Share trading
Farming
Retail shop
Doing any one of these well involves specific account setup, some custom reports, custom fields and probably report transformations. While it is possible for everyone to develop their own version, sharing solutions would increase Managers performance for the average user so increase Manager value overall.
To be fair the benefit would depend on how readily the community shared their solutions. It is probably already occurring at the reseller level. Creating and sharing of template businesses would achieve some of this functionality, but not allow ready combination of applications or adding functionality to an existing Manager business.
Here we are on what I feared… I need to create a new Business and I cannot import all the Tax Setting and Custom Fields that I spent so many time for mapping. Is there a tentative date for batch create and update or should I loss many hours to recreate them?
