Some of the things you can do with ManagePLUS fall under the heading of "special topics". These are techniques and features of interest to some ManagePLUS users, but not all. We discuss some of them here, for those who want more detail about how ManagePLUS can be used.

Not interested in these topics? If that's the case, you can...

QuickBooks lets you enter a quantity on each line of most transaction types--Invoices, Bills, Checks, Sales Receipts, etc., by using QuickBooks Items. 

But depending on your information needs, one quantity isn't always enough. In many businesses, having two quantities associated with transactions can provide valuable management information later. Usually one of the two quantities is a "count"--the number of items bought or sold--and the other represents the "weight" or "volume" of those items.

In fact, almost every business which buys or sells items that are identified uniquely and which have varying weight or volume can benefit from having this information...

• The manager of a meat wholesaling business needs to know both the number and the weight of the various items he sells. Besides the fact that customers expect this information on invoices, having totals, averages, and statistics for both quantities can help him control his business. Though he doesn't answer the phone to take customer orders, he can see that one customer only orders heavy Cornish baking hens and that his largest customer--a restaurant across town--overwhelmingly orders smaller-than-average sirloin steaks. Armed with this information, he can consider ways to better serve those customers and provide exactly the meat products they want.

• A rancher needs to know both the number and weight of calves sold. Having totals and averages for both numbers over a period of years tells him a lot about the effects of his management practices:  calving and weaning dates, grazing patterns, feeding regimens, etc.

• A contractor who charges for trenching by the foot may also want to know how many hours his employees have spent on trenching jobs. If feet and hours are both entered on invoices, at year's end the totals for each can yield useful management information:  "I'm paying $X per hour for labor, so am I charging enough per foot for trenching?", and so on.

How Do I Enter Two Quantities
In a QuickBooks Transaction?

The basic idea is that when using QuickBooks forms which supports Items--Invoices, Bills, Checks, Sales Receipts, etc.--the first quantity goes in the form's Quantity column, as usual. But you enter the second quantity in the Memo or Description field in the line items area of the form.

Here's an example transaction which records a rancher's sale of some cows. The number of cows sold is entered in the Quantity column, and total weight sold is entered at the beginning of the Description field.

Yes, it's that simple. The only rule to observe is this: if you also type some additional text in the Memo or Description field, it must be separated from the quantity by at least one blank space.

When ManagePLUS imports this transaction it will extract the weight from the Memo field so that it can be used on reports, providing information like average weight per cow sold, average selling price per pound and per head, etc.
 

Not all QuickBooks forms support quantity entries. The Deposits window is an example:  it has no column where you can enter a quantities associated with the lines of the deposit.

The QuickBooks-oriented solution to this shortcoming is to first enter a transaction on a form which supports quantity entries--such as the Sales Receipt form--and post the amount to the Undeposited Funds account. Second, you would prepare a Deposit which includes the Undeposited Funds amount.

But part of the ManagePLUS philosophy is to support however you prefer to keep records so long as it results in good information. Some people prefer to record cash sales directly in the Deposits window, without the separate step of first entering them in a Sales Recept form. If that's how you prefer to do things, but you want quantity information in your Deposit entries, ManagePLUS makes it possible.

Here is a QuickBooks Deposit of a check in payment for cattle sold, with quantities entered in the Memo field.

Without a Quantity column provided by QuickBooks, this time both quantities (19440 pounds and 36 head) are entered in the Memo field. To enter two quantities in the Memo field, just separate them with an equal sign ("="), and of course include a blank space following the second quantity, before typing any other text.
 

You probably know that QuickBooks has a calculator feature which lets you do math while entering transactions, and that it's quite useful. But one negative of using the calculator is that it just produces a single number to record in the transaction--there is no good way to preserve the details of the calculation and keep them with the transaction. Many times, having those details available later would do a lot to explain what the transaction was about.

ManagePLUS makes it possible to keep calculation details with transactions, by supporting the entry of quantities as mathematical formulas. This feature cannot be used everywhere: you can't enter formulas in the Quantity field of a QuickBooks form, for example (QuickBooks only allows simple numbers there). But it works for entering quantities in the Memo or Description field of a transaction, to be extracted later by ManagePLUS. 

ManagePLUS supports these mathematical operations:

Here's a Deposit showing quantities entered as formulas (highlighted in red). In this example, quantities for the Sales:Grain:Soybeans account need to be entered in bushels. (In fact, the abbreviation "bu." has been made part of the account name to serve as reminder.)

Here's the meaning of the formula in the first line: 48000 was the actual gross weight of the truckload of soybeans represented by this transaction line; 17000 was the tare or "empty" weight of the truck; and 60 is the number of pounds in a bushel of soybeans. So 48000-17000 = 31000 net pounds of soybeans, and divided by 60 = 516.67 bushels...the quantity ManagePLUS will extract when it imports this transaction.

Quantity Math Can Help with Estimating... Suppose you're a hay producer who keeps track of hay sales by the ton. But you have quite a few horse hay customers who buy small quantities by the bale (i.e., not weighed). You need to convert these sales to tons to have accurate quantity information. With ManagePLUS you can enter by-the-bale sales as a formula, like this: 50*55/2000 This represents a sale of 50 bales of hay at an estimated average weight of 55 pounds per bale, divided by 2000 pounds (to convert pounds to tons). ManagePLUS will automatically read this formula and calculate the result (1.375 tons) when it imports the transaction.

How Will I Know my Formula is OK

You won't know this until ManagePLUS refreshes its copy of your transactions. When it retrieves transactions from QuickBooks, ManagePLUS extracts quantity information from them, including evaluating any formulas it finds. If any formulas have errors, ManagePLUS adds an Errors button on the toolbar in the Transactions tab.

You can click the Errors button to toggle between displaying all transactions, and displaying only transactions with errors.

When error display is turned on, the Transactions tab shows only those transactions with Memo-field quantity errors. The errors are highlighted in yellow and the line below (in blue here) gives information about the error:

The error display should help you identify the cause of the errors, so you can find and fix those transactions in QuickBooks. (Note: After making transaction changes in QuickBooks, don't forget to refresh transactions in ManagePLUS so your changes will show up there.)
 

But I Don't See Quantities in My Reports!

This is a common problem for new ManagePLUS users...at least until they understand a simple fact about how ManagePLUS works:

ManagePLUS was designed this way, to prevent showing quantity information where it would be meaningless--such as for accounts in which things are bought or sold in many different units of measure.

Once you've assigned either one or two units of measure with an account, quantity information for that account should appear in your reports.