aC forum: [Invoicing Module] Feedback

Post #32 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:36:56 CDT

Hello Len,

Which exact version of activeCollab do you use? Version number is displayed in System Information block on Administration page.

Post #31 by Len Marshall

Len Marshall — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 01:50:33 CDT

I've fixed the rounding problem with adding payments. I've been going crazy trying to work around it - editing my database and manually fixing things - so I started looking into a solution.

The problem is that when you add items in the invoice, the system calculates to as many decimals is requred, but displays a rounded dollar & cent value. When you try to add a payment for the dollar & cent value, the system balances it to the extreme decimal value. Since you cannot enter a value less than $0.01, the system cannot complete the invoice as billed.

Now for the simple solution: round the taxed_total to 2 decimals before it's passed and saved into the database.

Open up activecollab\application\modules\invoicing\models\invoices\Invoices.class.php

Search for the comment "// now we have total tax for invoice, we need to round it up to 2 decimals". This was the tip-off, but it doesn't work.

Add this new line:

$this->taxed_total = round($this->taxed_total, 2);

after this existing line:

$this->taxed_total = $this->total + $this->tax;

which is line 350 in my case.

I've tested this with many invoices and it seems to do the trick. I'm not a PHP programmer, but my research and Visual Quickstart Guide seem to be working out.

Post #30 by Leon P.

Leon Poole — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:31:42 CDT

Some really great points above!

We were thinking today that if an extra column or two like 'amount paid' or 'amount due/remaining' was added to the table on the Invoices Issued (/invoices) page it would make that at-a-glance information a lot more informative.

Can't wait for next release of Invoices module :)

Post #29 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:58:26 CDT

Hi Marko,

Thank you for the feedback - we really appreciate it.

Just a quick note about discounts: if you wish to include information about discount you gave to the client or list services that you did pro bono, you can add items with negative or 0 amount. It does not support values to be set in percents, but it can get the job done.

Post #28 by mrakar

mrakar — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:00:06 CDT

hello,

I think adding invoincing option is a great thing, I have installed beta (after some troubles) and have created my first invoice.

Here are some thoughts on my invoice:

a) invoice number: different companies have different invoicing schemes, for example in my company invoice number will always start with 1000. I have issued a number of invoices this year and I wish to move to AC invoicing module but how can I start issuing invoices with number 1233? some companies have different number series for different services (for example invoices starting with 1 or even letter might be for items sold, and series 2 or another letter might be for services)

b) in EU and basically all other countries companies and people have their VAT/TAX number. This is quite important and basically this is single most important unique number for particular subject. Maybe it deserves its own field in the database?

c) invoice items: you have option to add tax to each line of the invoice. I do not think that is smart thing to do. VAT is usually calculated in a way that you have to add all invoice items and only then you add VAT percentage. In this scenario you might actually create invoice which will not be valid, because sum of invoice items and their tax will not be the same as if you sum all invoice items and then add VAT on the sum. (rounding will create difference which will not be alowed by your tax office)

d) there is not a place where you can add discount or malus for particular line item. For example, you might wish (or your customer might insist on it) to have their contractual discunt shown on the invoice. Also there might be a case where you want to add some percentage for special work (for example your normal work hour is 50eur and night or weekend hours are 50% more).

d1) invoice might deserve special discount on total sum (either in percentage or in monetary equivalent)

e) software will allow you to add quite long sentences, but it will not alow you to add some description (for example "domain migration" as main invoice line item and then below with few lines of additional explanations such as:
- DNS reconfiguration
- backup of the old domain
- restoration
- upgrade....)

This are quick ones, I will try to analyse and suggest some more ideas.

Post #27 by lockwesmonster

lockwesmonster — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:47:18 CDT

Thanks Ilija.

I have a suggestion.

I think it would be great to be able to define different bill rates per hour, similar to the way you can define a rate per hour per currency.

Here is the way I am currently using the currency feature. First, I went through every template view (and javascript), commented out {$active_invoice->getCurrencyCode()|clean} and then added $ in front of the total amount. This way the abbreviation of my currencies would not show up at all.

I then went into the currency section and made some custom currencies. For example, my hourly bill rate for development is different from my hourly bill rate for my creative. Thus, I set up "Development" as a currency with its hourly bill rate and set up Creative with its own hourly bill rate.

However, there are a couple of caveats about doing this.
1) It only works if you are only planning on receiving one type of currency. In my case the $ (USD).
2) If there are multiple rows in the invoice that contain different types of "currencies" (in my case if it contains a "Creative" row and a "Development" row), both rows will inherit the same bill rate as defined in the currency drop down. Thus, you will have to manually override the hourly rate of the row that is not the same type as defined in the drop down yourself.

My Conclusion and Suggestion:
It would be best if you could define a category in the time tracking module and then assign hourly bill rates for each category in the invoicing module.

Post #26 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:51:24 CDT

Hi lockwesmonster,

We still need to rethink Invoices Archive a bit before the final version. Current version is not functional.

Post #25 by lockwesmonster

lockwesmonster — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:06:12 CDT

In the invoices archive for the total paid column, there is a static value of $1230.

It can be found in /activecollabs/applications/modules/invoicing/views/invoicing_archive/index.tpl at line 17.

What variable should be here?

BTW, I just updated to the newest version of the beta today.

Post #24 by Ilija Studen

Ilija Studen — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:07:51 CDT

Hi Ira,

You are correct - system currently is not able to calculate compound taxes. We'll see to have this implemented in one of the future releases. I'm afraid that the only option at the moment is to hack the code :(

Post #23 by ira42

ira42 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:02:46 CDT

Hi guys,

Love the idea of the Invoice Module. Good job!

However, unless I'm missing something, it can not really be used in Canada, or anywhere that uses compound taxes.

At least here in Quebec, we have 2 sets of taxes (GST & PST), which are 5% and 7.5%. Problem is that the GST is first applied to the subtotal, and then the PST is applied to the subtotal * GST. So for a $1000 invoice:

SUBTOTAL: $1000
GST: (1000 * .05) = $50
PST: (1050 * .075) = $78.75
TOTAL: $1128.75

Are there perhaps any hooks that I could use to extend the module? Or would I have to modify the core module code directly?

Tx!

Ira