We’ve hit an issue recently where we don’t know how it happened but the result was that in QF we had the same supplier invoice three times using the same supplier reference.
We’d also paid the invoice twice before spotting the error just before it was paid a third time!
In other systems I’ve used the purchase reference is a unique field or at least a warning is flagged if you try and enter a purchase reference which matches an existing one (I guess there could be a circumstance where two suppliers use the same reference number at some point).
The problem with enforcing supplier reference uniqueness is that there are cases where the same supplier reference is used against multiple invoice. To switch to forcing uniqueness now would be very difficult as there would be no simple way to handle all the current duplicates and no doubt some users will not want to be warned all the time that they’re using the same code.
I’m aware that there are also cases where users apply the same supplier reference across a bunch of invoices just to group them for reporting.
It’s possible to add a warning so when you make a change in this box it will do a background check for any matching supplier references. Would that work?
If we were to do this on purchase invoices we’d probably do the same on sales invoice, just with the Purchase Ref instead.
We have quite a few feature requests backed up now so I can’t promise when this will be looked at in more detail but I have logged it.
@u4h37u@Parker1090 we’ve now enabled a warning message on both the sales and purchase invoice entry screens. If you attempt to use a duplicate purchase ref. (for sales invoices) or supplier ref. (for purchase invoices) you will see a warning like this:
I’ve noticed that this warning message appears even if the reference is used by another supplier e.g. two different suppliers can’t have a reference number of jul001.
Is this something that is going to fixed in a later update?
Yes it’s an account-wide check. Purchase Ref on sales invoices probably needs to remain this way but Supplier Ref should ideally be restricted at the supplier level as there’s a good chance two suppliers may issue the same reference. What do you think?
Firstly thanks for the change in the first place, we appreciate it.
Secondly the further refinement you suggest doesn’t matter as much as the first change but I see the sense in it and I feel is a further improvement. I agree it makes sense to leave as-is for purchase ref on sales but change for supplier ref to be restricted at the supplier level. That would have still prevented our error the other week.
No problem, I think isolating the supplier ref. search to just the selected supplier is sensible. Will log in our planning system so it should be updated shortly.
