Search Interrogation in purchase order and sales items

Feature Request
1

Hello,

Currently when entering a new purchase order if you click the search icon it allows you to search the “item name” field within the purchase order inventory. This is ok and works however I think that it would be much better if the search option interrogated both “item name” and “description”. This is also transferable to “creating a new invoice” and the sales inventory.

My reason for thinking this is as follows: “item name” is a unique identifier as such i suspect that data entered into this is normally in the form of part numbers which generally are (should be) meaningless other than as a unique identifier. The description however often has much recognisable data for the user. Therefore when searching for inventory items it would be much better to interrogate data that is more likely to mean something to the user i.e. the description

Lets set the scene:
Imagine an idiot using the system, for arguments sake lets call him Thomas Brooks.
Thomas needs to search for a purchase order item. He knows that he has entered them into the purchase order inventory and he knows that they produce light so he enters “light” into the search bar. Nothing, not a thing. What Thomas would have to do to find the item he is searching for is to enter “0000023” into the search bar which would bring up Light bulb in the description field and now he can proceed with his purchase order creation.

Just a thought I could’ve missed something. Any thoughts/contributions will be greatly received.

Cheers,
Tom

1 Like
2

Hi @ThomasBrooks

Thank you for the suggestion.

We’ll leave this thread open for the time being and let other users add their votes and comments for this. If there’s enough interest, we can certainly take a closer look at this.

1 Like
3

Hi Tom
Having the same issues, and I also have no idea why purchase orders aren’t the same as sales invoices/estimates either, ie Item No, Description, unit cost,qty, etc rather than Category,Description, etc

My workarround I’m trying out is to use key words in the Item Name,

eg
Cable 34c 1.0mm SY
Cable 36c 0.5mm Def
Cable 4c 4.0mm SY

and in the Descriptions,
Part No. 73028

34x1.0sqmm (Class 5 Flexible) TYPE SY
PVC/PVC/GSWB/PVC TRANS 300/500v
Cores:Black Numbered + 1 Green/Yellow.

Purchase%20Inventory%20List
Purchase%20Inventory%20List917×899 58.5 KB

This lets you find the item you want to buy by searching for key words such as cable / SY / 36c,
and
The description then contains enough for the supplier to know what you want including their part number.

Still tweaking this, but seems to work, but very frustrating this is not better thought through.

I have also requested,
How do I show Part number on a purchase order?
The usual information for a Supplier purchase order is,
Item No, Part No, Description, Qty, Price
and additionally for Inventory
Price per, Discount
All I can seem to show is Description, Qty, Price ?

Hope this helps
Cheers
Chris

4

Hello,

Have you turned on purchase order in accounts management that allows you to enter quantity values into each line. I made this mistake there are purchase orders and purchase invoices. 2 different things.

Your work around will work but a part number should have no other feature other than a unique identifier. Adding a description doesn’t make sense as you end up enterting the same or highly similar information in two different places a big no no as it gets confusing and simply a waste of time. (Not knocking you just my opinion and like is said it does work so can’t argue with that)

It could be an easy fix: to allow the searches to interrogate both description and item name!!!.

Just need to drum up enough interest to warrant the tech wizards to looking into it. I.e. anyone else struggling with this issue drop a comment on here. :+1::+1:

Cheers, Tom

1 Like
5

Hi Tom

Yep, turned on purchase ordering in accounts management,
and yes under stand PO (purchase order placed on your supplier)
and PI (purchase invoice received from your supplier after goods received) are different but should tie up if pricing was right and PO’s can be converted to PI’s to save time entering PI’s.

Totally agree with you about part no being unique etc.
The purchase order side needs a lot more thought from the developers.
My suggestion above was only my way of making it work, but defiantly not ideal.

My other posts on Purchase orders,
https://community.quickfile.co.uk/t/purchase-invoice-reply-email-address/25473
https://community.quickfile.co.uk/t/part-numbers-for-sales-purchase-inventory/25465/5

Cheers
Chris

6

Yes to both of those things it is weird that the upper doesn’t receive a part number.

It would be nice if the purchase order side of things had a revamp its a bit basic.

1 Like
7

I don’t think there is a large enough uptake to get anything changed in related to this topic. Any other suggestions on the issues in this topic would be appreciated.

cheers,
Tom

8

Usually when this gets brought up (or advancements in the inventory side of things in general) the reasoning is that this is primarily an accounts package and the very basic inventory is secondary to everything else, therefore the accounts side of things is where the main development focus is.

I think what would probably be a better idea is for the inventory (and by extension the invoice and purchase orders) had more fields that could be populated by the API so you could integrate an external inventory system more easily (either directly or via Zapier).

If you follow the same line of thought you could then come full circle almost and use an external inventory management system that simply created invoices via the current API. I suppose it all depends exactly how complex your inventory is and what external solutions may work for you.

9

Thanks for the reply Lurch.

Yes this seems like a viable idea.

I must state: I am not an IT guy, i’m a welder.

My problem is we produce lots of things that are all part numbered. The part numbers relate to drawings, CAD models and physical parts.

As such I need an inventory which holds data relating to a part number and then allows this data to be exported in the form of purchase orders and invoices. The data needs to hold a search feature which allows you to search a description field or possibly categorise data. That way as the part numbers increase the data can be interrogated efficiently.

I have no wish to take my accounting software requirements else where however the purchase and invoice inventories are not comprehensive enough for my requirements as they cant handle the search capabilities i’m after.

In short do you or anyone else have any ideas for “external solutions” (a reasonably priced inventory software that can integrate with Quickfile)?

many thanks,
Tom

10

Have a look at Zapier and see if there’s anything that you might be able to use and integrate.

Sometimes you need to think outside of the box slightly, as in maybe not necessarily use an actual inventory management system but possibly something like Woocommerce which will integrate with Quickfile. You can then customise Woocommerce to do the stock control/inventory and invoicing layout and by using Zapier Woocommerce can raise the invoice in Quickfile filling it with all the data you want.