Having an invoice with a quantity but no identified unit makes the invoice unusable for multiple lines. I am an HR consultant and as such have invoice lines that are for different items, and units of those items (all on the same invoice).

What should appear (and did on my old MYOB package) is:

Qty Description Unit Unit Price Total
2 Attend meeting Hours £175.00 £350.00
1 Travel to London £48.80 £48.40
2 Management Workshop Days £1000.00 £2000.00
76 Travel to Ealing Miles £0.50 £38.00

However..... the above appears on a Solar invoice without any explanation of the units:

Qty Description Unit Price Total
2 Attend meeting £175.00 £350.00
1 Travel to London £48.80 £48.40
2 Management Workshop £1000.00 £2000.00
76 Travel to Ealing £0.50 £38.00

This makes the lines incomprehensible for the client.

I realise to change this would mean an adjustment to the invoice entry table to allow for a free format unit description and an adjustment to the invoice template, but I believe it must be critical for most businesses that are service based and have a mix of hours, days, miles, materials, etc to invoice to the client.

For the time being I am having to re-generate the invoice that goes to the client in a word processing programme - which is just duplicating effort, and could potentially allow for error.

Is anyone else in this position? Are there any plans to incorporate this in a next release? Is there anything I can help with to smooth the process to achieve this change in what appears to be the only short fall in this excellent product?

Sorry about the formatting in the examples - but I think you can get the picture!

Hi Nigel,

We'll note your suggestion about having a 'Unit' column, but I'm afraid we cannot make promises about future development.

Maybe you could add the extra information to the description field like this:
Qty Description Unit Price Total
2 Attend meeting (2 Hours) £175.00 £350.00
1 Travel to London £48.80 £48.40
2 Management Workshop (2 Days) £1000.00 £2000.00
76 Travel to Ealing (76 Miles) £0.50 £38.00

I realise it's not ideal, but probably better than creating a separate invoice. What do you think?

Cheers,

Yes.... that would be a work around but certainly doesn't look very professional with the qty field, and the qty and unit also in the description.

I raised this as I just thought it was a change that would make a fundamental difference for some current and potential users. I realise you can't promise anything but perhaps as a user community we could monitor the need to see how many feel they would benefit from it.

How about considering a "consultants" add on as an extra..... I certainly would be prepare to pay for such a facility (within reason!!!).

Thanks anyway.

Hi Nigel,

I think that many consultants would bill their clients in only one unit type (eg. 'Hours') and could therefore change the 'Unit Price' column title as described here:
http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk/help/how-to-customise-invoice-columns.php

However, I agree that in cases where there are multiple unit types it is not ideal to have the unit type in the description field. I have noted this as an option for future development.

Regards,