SAME!!! It’s incredibly frustrating! I need help with this, too!
I also feel it, when what is working well has to be thrown away and replaced with something new.
For Desktop and Server Edition, staying on version 24.4.3.1395 seems to be fine.
I think this done for the new “Export” feature to be easily implemented without too much complexity.
I dont think starting balance is needed all the time. Just during the start of business.
One way it could be handled is to have an Opening balance Wizard where opening balances could be entered in batch, and then that would create a journal entry having those starting balances.
TBH i like this new method, didnt have any issue with previous one but this one look clear and you got all your starting balances in one place.
So many people are coming up with complains where are the starting balances for inventory items but hardly anyone notices they are missing from all other forms too.
That leads me to conclusion that these people were using starting balances incorrectly - introducing new inventory items with starting balances long after their business started on Manager. That would affect financial statements retrospectively.
So I’m not entirely sure about “working well” part. Those users were unknowingly stuffing up their books.
The biggest reason is that starting balances can get complicated. For example, why can’t you enter starting balance for accounts receivable and need to enter individual sales invoices? Because on cash basis, these unpaid sales invoices get introduced into the financial statements only when paid and when they get paid, we need to know what was paid - income accounts, tax codes etc. involved (not just starting balance)
Other types of starting balances have their own challanges.
The fact that purging method gets significantly easier to implement when there are no starting balances on the forms and that many users are unknowingly using starting balances wrong is just confirmation that removing starting balances is the correct path forward.
Exactly thats what i was thinking. But then i assumed that they may be setting up Manager for some new business. But who knows. Their posts are not clear.
And thats what i was confused about when i saw Export/Purging feature for the first time a few months back. And this is not something new i have seen other accouting/erps using this method.
Only thing which might make an issue, those who got thousands of customers/inventory items. So even if they batch update through spreadsheet thats gonna be lots of column (even if they divide it in small batches) as lines are added as new columns in Batch update.
Starting balance field for customers and inventory items was inappropriate anyway.
For customers, businesses still had to create starting balances as sales invoices. Nothing has changed here.
And for inventory items, there are multiple starting balances for each inventory item. You might want to get correct starting balances for Qty on hand, Qty owned, Qty to receive, Qty to deliver etc. And this is again best served to just enter transactions (e.g. open sales orders, open purchase orders)
Once you enter all the transactions, you can use journal entry to make further adjustments so all starting balances are correct.
My point is that starting balance is not really just a single figure for customers or inventory items.
Some businesses can get away with making one big journal entry. It really depends.
Either way, starting balances are to be established using one or more transactions (not necessarily by journal entries but journal entries are convenient for this)