V5 :: Feature Request: Refinements in Products/Items + Description entry, etc

While entering invoices a couple of things have not felt right:

First: using the term “Products” in service based businesses feels strange. We should probably have “Products” actually be named “Items” (to coincide with the term Item that is used in the line items) or allow it to be changed to “Services” or some kind of generic term… Although I do mainly run a service oriented business, I do sometimes sell parts at cost and so those are needed too, but the term “Product” for some reason just doesn’t feel like any system I’ve used before and throws me off. I think Items would be more natural in this situation since “Item” is the main name of each item in the invoice.

Second, and perhaps more important for workflow: I have a default value that serves as a reminder for the “Description” field and that field. When an item type is selected for an Item on each invoice line, the “Description” field should be automatically selected so we can start typing over our default values for more rapid entry. When entering many 10s of lines for an invoice the current entry method feels very clunky. Thus upon selection of the Item type, having the system auto-highlight the description field would really help to speed it up. This would then help in the tab movement to the next fields since having no field in each Item selected by default requires the person doing entry to click on into the Description.

Third, can the order of items be changed (and fields added) for the invoice Item presentation? For example, in my case I’d like to have Quantity, Item, Description, Unit Price, Discount, Tax and Line Total - in that order… Eg, this feels more natural:

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback!

  1. The convention in the app is that when a product is added to an invoice it’s considered an ‘item’ and when a task is added it’s considered a ‘service’. You can change the labels shown to your clients on Settings > Localization > Custom Labels

  2. That’s a good suggestion, noted.

  3. You can change the order of the columns on the PDF on Settings > Invoice Design but we don’t support changing the admin portal UI.

Note: it’s best to submit feature requests on GitHub, we sort by upvotes and you’ll be notified once it’s implemented.

Thanks for letting me know about your preference for feature requests on GitHub. Everyone seems to have their own conventions (I’ve been chewed out by a couple projects before for using GH Issues in this fashion, but I should have checked).

No worries, thanks again for your feedback!

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Added two of the issues here as per request:

Hello,

Changing order of the columns in admin portal UI is highly needed.

Regards

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Hello,

Any updates here https://github.com/invoiceninja/admin-portal/issues/278

Regards

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We are similarly very sad about this as well. We simply cannot use the system until this and a few other points are addressed and we’re still paying a subscription for this. I don’t understand why we have been so deprioritized in this regard, especially when there is clear and evidenced need. We really hate our other multi-pronged approach where we are using two different invoicing systems and feel like Invoice Ninja can unify our work, but it needs some things to help streamline the situation for input + invoice customization.

I’m going to try to regroup today with one other user that predominantly works with the invoicing here and see what is truly missing or inefficient and won’t allow us to change so hopefully I can offer Invoice Ninja support a succinct idea of what we have blocking us (I do know this one in terms of even with the kind-of-workaround is still a problem).

I cannot believe this. I was so excited about this platform. I have literally tried dozens. With so many possibilities as far as the customization, I am disappointed once again. I own and operate a landscaping company. I do not sell products, only my services. When is someone going to get this right?

The points in the original post have been addressed in the latest version of the app.

You should be able track your services as products in the app to make it quicker to create invoices, are you running into any specific problem?