Upgrade Issues

Firstly, sorry! I know there are soo many posts on upgrades, Ive been reading through many, but I am still lost. I am not an accountant (merely a small business owner trying to do my own book keeping).
So, it seems I never upgraded Manager software (for many years). Old version was 15.5.61, and now I am trying to work in current version 18.9.94

It appears that the upgrade is highlighting all my poor skills in proper record keeping in older version. I never recorded a customer in my ‘old’ sales invoices as every transaction is small and every transaction is a new customer. I never felt the need to create an individual customer for every sales transaction. It appears that this has come back to bite me. For my 1925 sales invoices, they are sitting with customer as suspense. This appears to be possibly the first problem of many that I need to work through.

Is there a way to bulk update all 1925 records so that the customer field might reflect a ‘single customer’ (almost as if each invoice is just a cash sale)? Whilst I may not carry this practice forward, I am simply trying to restore my historical data so that my account balances are all accurate.

Would the lack of customer information be the cause of my missing “Income” section when I look at my overall summary? I seem to view Assests, Liabilities, Equity and then Expenses, but my Income is not showing.

Apologies for the dumb questions. It seems easy to learn to use software but harder to understand with a 3 year upgrade jump. Thanks for any help offerred

You can use Batch Update to change these invoices after creating a generic customer (like Cash Sale).

It sounds like you should start by browsing the Guides.

Lack of customers is not related to absence of income accounts. Those you deleted at some point.

Hi Tut, Thanks so much for your prompt reply.
I have researched Batch feature and it doesn’t appear to be available for updating Sales Invoices…is that correct? There is an export function and a Batch delete but neither of these help to batch update Customers on sales

Also, I have not deleted any records at any stage (for income). I have my old computer running version 15 and my new computer running version 18. They are currently sitting side by side, running concurrently. I created a backup file in the old version, imported it to new version and I simply have no records of sales at all. If I create a new sales invoice with payment, it records correctly however my existing 1925 records are not displaying a sale even though the invoice is present and the receipts of payment (for each sales invoice) are present. Can you recommend any other place I could search for this solution?

Thanks so much for your help!

I think I have found potential problem. It seems that my V15 had all my receipted payments listed in an Income Field called Accounts receivable (not sure if this is something I manually created?), however when importing data into V18, The Income section (of Accounts structure) appears to be replaced by sales (now listed in Profit Loss Statement - again, I am not sure that I created this sales section).
Consequently, All my historical data has not transferred from ‘accounts receivable payments’ to cash sales.
I can manually edit every payment to new ‘sales’ account. Again I cant find a batch function. Thanks! I hope I make sense

You’re right. I was thinking of earlier versions, where batch operations were either all present or all absent. Sorry about that.

It sounds like you were not selling on credit. So you should not have used sales invoices at all. Read this Guide: https://www.manager.io/guides/7321. This seems to be what you should be doing going forward.

I was not referring to deleting records. You said you had no income section in your accounts. At least one Sales account is created by default when adding your first business. So either you deleted that account (and possibly others) or you have not recorded any income.

So, let me ask, are you using accrual or cash basis account? If you created sales invoices, but have not properly received payments against them, and you’re using cash basis accounting, you won’t have any income. Read this Guide: https://www.manager.io/guides/7129.

No, you didn’t create it. The program did when you enabled the Customers tab and entered your first invoice. But it isn’t an income account, it’s an asset account. And its behavior is tied to your choice of accrual or cash accounting.

This is the default, placeholder income account I mentioned above.

Nor should it. Your comments suggest you are not familiar with some basic accounting principles. Manager is a tool, and until you understand what the tool is supposed to do, you won’t be able to use it effectively. I recommend spending some time on this web site: https://www.accountingcoach.com/. It’s free and has good examples.

Thanks, Your response is very thorough and I am very grateful!
Yes, I have flaws in my understanding and these have transferred to my use of manager.

You’re right! I don’t sell on credit so I have learned that I really don’t need to create sales invoices and instead I only need to create receipts/payments for my transactions. I will definitely fix my methods moving forward!

I use the cash method however I never understood how this transferred through to my entries for sales invoices & receipts. I am learning this now by hours of reading on this wonderful forum.

So I believe that my issues relate to cash/accrual and I now believe I need to edit all my receipts to remove links to accounts receivable and record against cash sales instead. I hope I am on the right track?

I have found a find and recode function…does this sound correct? Thanks for accounting coach link and guides posted. I am most grateful!

Not by itself. The problem is that you created all those sales invoices pointing nowhere. Now, you could delete them all with Batch Delete. You already have the receipts and might use Find & Recode to repost them to appropriate income accounts. But you would still be plowing through thousands of transactions manually. In the other thread, I suggested you might consider starting over.

By the way, please don’t mix related comments among different threads. That makes it very hard to provide answers. And duplicating comments just slows down responses.

Thanks. I tried to find way to delete other thread but couldn’t find a way. Sorry. At first I didn’t realise the treads were related.