What am I doing wrong here?

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I am having problems with display of information in the inventory, Sales Quotes and Delivery Notes. Please see pictures for details.

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As you can see in Inventory, I have put product type such as Laptop and then the specific model Fujitsu Lifebook E544 in the Code Column. I have then put the product code VFY:E5440M15B1GB in the Name Column and I have put a description of the device such as 14" screen, 4GB RAM, in the Description Column.

The reason I put Laptop first, is so that all my laptops are together in order as are all my memory modules etc! The reason that I put the Laptop and Model in the Code Column and put the Product Code in the Name column is because if I do it the other way around, I am not getting the information I should be seeing in the sales quotes etc. See 2nd picture for the quote. As you can see if I put Laptop in the Code column I see the Laptop details in the Item column on the quote. When I put the code in the code column, I get the code in the Item column on the quote.

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The third problem that I am encountering is when I want to select a laptop that is an identical model such as Fujitsu Lifebook E544 but with different specifications such as SSD Drive or different CPU. When I select inventory item in the drop menu on a sales quote, this is what I am seeing -

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As you can see I am seeing part code and the laptop Manufacturer and Model, but because I cannot see the description column in the inventory items drop down, I cannot differentiate between the three E544 laptops because the information about which hard drive or cpu is in the description column which I cannot see!

The Fourth Problem that I am having is with the delivery notes! See picture

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as you can see, all I can see is the description of the laptop details. There is no manufacturer and model details.

As I seem to be the only one that is having these sort of issues, I am wondering if maybe I am using inventory items incorrectly as I cannot seem to get the Sales Quotes, drop down menus and Delivery Notes to show what information it is supposed to be showing!

Could somebody please help as I really need to fix these issues with the inventory items before I add more inventory items as it will be a monumental job to completely redo the inventory items as I am adding new inventory items all the time.

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Yeah, this is something that bothers me too.

When I’ve added features you are using, they were implemented in reactionary way because I didn’t really understand all the use-cases. Now that I understand inventory module a lot more, there will be some improvements.

Then I will be able to give proper guidance on how to setup your inventory items so you don’t deal with any of these issues.

1 Like
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Thank you. Its nice to know that its not me doing something really stupid. I was wondering why nobody else seems to have these issues. I do understand the problem. Each feature was added independently so they don’t really sort of work together!

It would be really good to get inventory sorted out as it really is a godsend for me. It has made my life so much easier, but definitely needs some tweaking so that it flows correctly from quotes to delivery notes etc. Look forward to hearing from you in the future regarding what improvements have been implemented to address these issues.

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Dalacor, I am with you on this. I have not moved the bulk of my organization’s inventory into the system until these processes you have pointed out are streamlined. As mentioned in my short appraisal of Manager a while back, this is one of the drawbacks of a fast changing / evolving application. I have confidence in the team that this will be tidied up in the short term.

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@lubos. I am currently engaged in a marketing campaign to increase client base. Before I start work for new prospective clients I would like to complete my inventory of all the things that I want to sell to clients. I am also wanting to change my inventory to split items up like laptop with three year warranty, so thats laptop with one year warranty as one inventory item and three year warranty item as another inventory item.

I am hoping to do all this between Xmas and New Years. Is there any possibility that you will be able to fix the flow issues before Xmas as you may need to change fields or other functionality of the inventory database. I don’t want to spend several days on my inventory work over Xmas and New Years adding and modifying everything and then have to redo everything in the event of a major overhaul of the inventory system. I will be doing several days work on the inventory so it would take me a long time to make changes when you make changes.

These are the things that need to be addressed with the inventory system and it would make sense if you did them all at the same time to make the whole thing integrated.

  1. Fix the flow issues as described above for Quotes and Delivery Notes which will require changes to inventory fields and changes to quotes and delivery notes etc.
  2. Link Supplier List for Inventory items with Supplier Name and website address (which would be obtained from supplier list info. Then when ordering new items we know what suppliers we could buy that product from. I am using the custom drop down list, but it only allows me to select one supplier and I still have to find their website.
  3. Cost price markup - as many others have requested, it is necessary to have the ability to markup the sale price by a percentage or a specific amount. For bulk import and for updating cost prices, this is really necessary
  4. Consider whether you want to include more columns in the inventory view and inventory edit settings. For example, I sell laptops and computers and switches etc. Thus a column field for product type like Laptop would be useful. I would imagine most people using inventory would find a product type column to be very useful so that one could filter by product type. A suppliers column could be good - I already use the custom drop down field to list supplier, but I can select one supplier. Name and Code Fields are currently the wrong way round.
  5. It would be useful to have a view option that shows only inventory that is in stock as well.
  6. Tracking codes for inventory items. I use tracking codes to track income from server sales, laptop sales, projector sales etc. I can add the tracking code in the sales invoice and purchase invoices, but I would prefer to be able to set the tracking code in the inventory item settings so that I don’t have to set it each and every time on every invoice.

I know that you are busy and I am sure that you have other requests lined up as well. However the week between Xmas time and News Years will be the only time that I will have to complete my inventory list and make whatever changes I want to existing products and I will be spending a significant amount of time on the inventory. I don’t want to do all that and have to change a lot of things when some or any of the above items that I have suggested are added to the program, so it would be desirable to have the inventory improvements done before Xmas. Other people have also indicated that they are waiting on the changes before moving their inventory to manager especially people who bulk import and want to have a percentage or specific amount markup for cost of sales. Cheers :grinning:

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Yes, I agree with this.

If you have multiple suppliers for inventory item, create “purchase invoice item” for each supplier which can linked to inventory item.

Use Batch update feature to update prices in bulk. Normally you would maintain external spreadsheet where you can apply whatever formula you need onto prices, then periodically import the updated prices.

Not sure I understand this.

This will be possible once warehousing is added. Right now, it would be pointless since from accounting point of view, you can have products on hand but physically not on hand.

I can add this but for now, you can set tracking codes on sales invoice items level.

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Yes, I agree with this.

Do you have any idea when this will be implemented as this is my chief concern with regards to adding new inventory over Xmas.

If you have multiple suppliers for inventory item, create “purchase invoice item” for each supplier which can linked to inventory item.

I will look into that as an option, but I am not really sure that I understand what you mean. But I will see if I can work it out.

Use Batch update feature to update prices in bulk. Normally you would maintain external spreadsheet where you can apply whatever formula you need onto prices, then periodically import the updated prices.

I can’t use batch update as I don’t get a price list from my suppliers. I have to go to their website and get the latest price. What I am interested in is only having to change the purchase price and it auotmagically updates the sales price by whatever percentage or markup I set instead of me having to change both prices. Granted it does not take long, but does not seem necessary when the computer should be able to calculate it automatically.

Not sure I understand this.

What I mean for example is having a field called Product Type in the inventory edit settings. Then when you open the inventory tab, you will see the following columns - Product Type, Name, Code, Description etc. Most businesses I imagine would find it useful to have a product type field to filter for fruite or filter for laptops or filter for tables

This will be possible once warehousing is added. Right now, it would be pointless since from accounting point of view, you can have products on hand but physically not on hand.

Do you have any idea when warehousing will be added? Will this affect my inventory that I have already added or will this be a separate module?

I can add this but for now, you can set tracking codes on sales invoice items level.

The problem with using Purchase Invoice and Sales Invoice Items is that I lose a lot of the functionality of inventory such as what is in stock, how much profit I have made on sales of specific item etc. For me Sales Invoice Items should only be used for non inventory Items. Just my thoughts.

Thank you for your feedback on the inventory issues.

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Not sure if I will make improvements by end of this month but I do want to make some improvements here.

I’m not planning to go beyond batch updates at this point.

You can already do this using custom fields. See: Manager Guides

Warehousing hopefully by end of this month. It won’t affect your inventory when introduced.

You can now link sales invoice items with inventory items. It wasn’t possible before but now it is.

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Thank you. I didn’t even think of using custom field for Product Type! That might actually work out very well as I don’t want to print the field on quote or anything!

I look forward to the warehousing module and see how that works. I will wait on the sales price markup functionality as its not urgent.

I will keep my inventory as it is now. I can live with only having one supplier - I don’t want five Purchase Invoice Items for five suppliers as I don’t want all their prices. I just want a list of who sells that product so I can get their latest price when I need to order anything.

Ditto for tracking codes for inventory. I would rather wait for tracking codes for inventory so I don’t complicate things by creating purchase invoice items and sales invoice items for one product!

Really keen to see this warehousing module that I have been hearing about.

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Hi @lubos,

I am busy with my inventory and one problem that I have into is this:

I created a custom field for product type as you suggested. This does help to filter for products in inventory tab which is great, but its not actually addressing the reason that I wanted to the product type field, which is basically to filter by product type on the sales quote form.

For example if I want to quote a laptop for a client, I would like to be able to select inventory sales, then product type, then inventory item from the list within product types. I would assume that other businesses would also like the same ability to filter the view within sales quote or sales invoice - if you have hundreds of inventory items (my list is already over a hundred inventory items and I have not really got started with inventory items yet) it is really useful to be able to break down the inventory items filtering view on the sales quotes and invoices as well as purchase orders and invoices.

I think it would also be useful on the customer quote or invoice for a product type field to be visible so you can break it down into Product Type - computer, Item - Fujitsu Esprimo e400 and Description Core i5, 4GB Ram etc. Or if you are selling food, break it into Product Type - Oranges, Item - Satsuma whatever and Description - grown in South Africa.

Custom fields are very useful, I am not saying otherwise, but the problem with custom fields is that we are not able to use the custom field to filter drop down menus in sales quotes etc and I happen to think that Product Type is a universal requirement across most businesses.

Anyway thats my input on product type as a custom field. While it is useful to be able to filter within inventory tab, I actually really wanted to be able to filter the drop down view of sales quotes and purchase orders etc as my inventory list is growing!

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In addition, it would be useful to be able to control the location of the custom fields. For example I would like product type to be the first field showing rather than its default position to just before the quantity.

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With control accounts, you will be able to create control account for each type of inventory items. Then instead of selecting Inventory - sales, you will be able to select Inventory - keyboard sales or something like that and get list of keyboards only.

Or simply make product type part of the name of item.

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That would work if I could get it to not show inventory - computers, inventory - laptops etc on the Summary page and on the Profit and Loss Statements.

I don’t want the Summary Page to have 20 income categories. All I want on the Summary Page is Inventory Sales, Sales and Foreign Exchange gains (losses). I might actually want to add on one or two income categories, but I definitely don’t want 20 categories!

I believe that there was talk of sub control accounts in an earlier thread. So I could have Inventory Sales on the Summary Page and I could have sub categories like Inventory-Computers, Inventory-Laptops, Inventory-Whiteboards etc as a sub control account. If so, then I could use your suggestion as that would work and is actually a very good idea as it allows people to customise the program to their unique needs far more than adding a new column as I suggested.

Do you have any idea when sub control accounts would be implemented as I will need to go over my inventory list again to change to subcontrol accounts. Not sure how this will affect the Inventory Tab View as it would be good to filter by sub control account.

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Going through other posts quickly, I see that you are implmenting Sub-Accounts and Custom Control Accounts whereas I am talking about Sub control Accounts.

What exactly is the difference between a Sub-Account and a Custom Control Account and for my purposes do I need a Sub-Account or Custom Control Account?

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Here is the thing. If you don’t want to end up with 20 accounts representing inventory sales on your balance sheet then custom control accounts are not going to cut it for you.

What I suggest is that product category should be entered in inventory item name field. That way when using autocomplete to select the correct inventory item, you can type category name and get all items which contain category in their name.

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I am currently doing that - putting product category into inventory item field but I feel that its not the best way to do things as I still think a builtin field for product types is better, but I will try the autocomplete option first as I am using that more and more now. I will get back to you on that one.

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I’m not currently planning to add built-in field for categories. Name field on inventory item should be whatever to make it easier to quickly find that item. It will never be shown to customer or supplier so you can really type in there anything.

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When I have time, I will demonstrate a workflow that is typical for my kind of company and you can see what issues I am encountering and then you can decide how you would like to improve the workflow for these issues because it doesn’t matter which way I do things right now, I am encountering problems with my workflow. So I will do a nice video demo for you as its so much easier to show someone than explain.

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@dalacor,

As a point of clarity: -

Are you actually requesting something as per the Purchase Invoice to be on the Sales Quotes and Sales Invoices?

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As I said to Lubos I will send him a video showing my workflow. I am not requesting one specific thing - its a number of issues that I have with the workflow of inventory. I will see if I can send him an email with video link today as it would far easier to explain if I show him my work process. so to answer your question, there are number of imrpovements and features that I am looking for.