View mode + Attachments for Inventory, Non Inventory & Reports

Would it be possible to create view mode for inventory and non-inventory items so it is possible to clone inventory as this is a frequent requirement.

I know that the VAT Calculation are reports but it would be useful to be able to attach pdf’s of my VAT Return to each quarterly report so that I have a “hard” copy of what was submitted at the time to ensure that it aligns with what the Manager report says.

I attach the PDF copy to the payment transaction to achieve a similar outcome.

I considered that, but I felt that it was not really the right place for it as the dates I pay my VAT will naturally differ from my VAT returns. I like the Reconciliation Tab and employee tab and invoice tab where every transaction has an attachment making it very easy for me to see if I have forgotten to add an attachment to any transaction. This is not really practical for the payments tab unless you constantly filtering the view for only VAT return payments.

If it can’t be done, I will probably put this into the Folders View once I have created a nice table which someone else here on the forum created. But again that is not desirable because you have to host the table somewhere outside of Manager.

A better solution would be to enable adding attachments to reports as there will be other uses for adding an attachment to a report. For example, with the budget report, I could attach an excel spreadsheet showing how the totals are calculated. I can think of many examples where reports could benefit from an attachment.

Thank you for adding this to the ideas category. I see that this was moved from another topic. Should this be merged with Implement View Mode functionality everywhere Feature as I had created a new topic to layout my request for this feature.

With the introduction of new View Mode for Inventory Items, Non-Inventory Items as well as Customers and Suppliers, it makes sense to review whether other areas of Manager would benefit from a view menu as the work involved is likely to be very much the same.

The following areas do not have a view menu.

  1. Bank Accounts
  2. Employee
  3. Fixed Assets

I don’t have all Tabs enabled, so there may be other areas.

I suspect that for Employees, one could attach employee contracts and also the ability to simply view employee details without editing them would make a lot of sense if you are only using Manager for payroll.

Fixed Assets, I don’t use enough to know whether a view menu would be of benefit as I can’t think offhand of any attachments that I would add to Fixed Assets. Same point with bank accounts. Not sure what attachments could be added or whether one needs to “View” the bank accounts.

However, as virtually every edit area now has a view area, it really does make sense to add view menus to the above three in order to achieve consistency throughout the program as I have no doubt that others have attachments that they would like to add to Bank Accounts, Fixed Assets and employees.

The following areas have an incomplete view menu.

Reports.

All reports have a view menu, but none of them have the ability to add attachments. Otherwise all view menus have Edit, Clone, Print and Pdf options as the primary buttons.

I submit that for:

Profit and Loss Budget an excel spreadsheet could be attached containing all the information used to calculate the totals put into the Profit and Loss Budget Report.

Vat Calculation Worksheet - I personally would like to add my VAT return attachment to HMRC to each Vat Return Report. This ensures that I have a hard copy of what I actually submitted at the time as Vat figures have changed over time as Manager was upgraded and bugs were fixed. To me there is no other logical place to put it.

There may be other user cases for adding attachments to different reports. Thus I would like to recommend that Reports View Mode include the ability to add attachments as I suspect that quite a few reports would work well with various attachments to add more detailed information to the report via a spreadsheet etc.

I do understand that reports are not transactions nor are they Inventory, but as long as you cannot delete a report until you have removed the attachment, I don’t see any issues with adding attachments?

Would it be possible to add this to the Ideas category and hopefully implement this soon as the work is likely to be identical to the work done to clone inventory items. For me, the main requirement would be attachments for the Vat Calculation Worksheet.

Or the ability to attach documents on the edit screen

I would disagree with that for two reasons.

Manager has the attachments on almost every View Mode. It makes sense to stick with that for consistency.

Secondly when working with invoices with many lines, it is much easier to see all the information in View Mode so when adding an attachment, I am able to quickly compare everything on the attachment with everything in view mode - like totals, quantities etc. It would not be as easy to do this in edit mode.

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I would like to see rounded totals in edit mode.
I would also like to be able to add attachments when creating a receipt, ie enter values then attach scanned documents as one action.

But I can see logic in your points.

@dalacor I agree with you.

Our tax authority sends us various documents about the tax refund report (such as a notification of receipt of a tax return form). Therefore, it is good to allow the user to save such documents in the appropriate place.