Need Ability to Archive Products and Customers
czyadgrl
Member Posts: 12
I have 2 scenarios where time and again, I've wished I could archive Products and Customers.
My business doesn't have many repeat customers (or each customer has a shelf life of about a year at the most where I'm billing them multiple times). After several years, I'm now left with a monstrous list of clients to sort through when looking for contact information or adding them to a new invoice. (And I'm really not THAT busy LOL).
Similarly, I've had a few shifts in my product listings and there are many Product descriptions that I don't want to use anymore, and new products are very similar. But it's difficult to decipher which to pick from the invoice drop-downs because I'd like the codes to remain similar and only changed a letter or two.
In both cases, we are not allowed to delete because they are attached to invoices. Fair enough.
But could we have an "archive" or "hide" or "make inactive" option added next to the edit and delete icons that would serve as a filter so they don't appear on the drop downs when creating new invoices? It would really speed up invoicing and help keep focused on the task instead of constantly worrying about picking the correct product listing or client with a similar name.
Long ago on an older accounting software with the initials F.B. we could do this and I used it constantly. It's about the only thing I'm really missing in Wave.
Thanks!
Comments
I uploaded a customers list in CSV format but now I want to make changes to all of them. How can I delete all of them and reupload?
Hi @albionwatch1. There isn't currently a way to mass remove customers from your customer list. That being said, you can delete a customer in just few clicks from the Customers page.
Since accidentally deleting your customer list would be a devastating mistake, we don't allow mass deleting of customers, as a safeguard.
This is a deal breaker for me. Any application that cannot accommodate block deletions is a poor one, to be sure. And the argument that disallowing such a function is intended prevent the "devastating mistake" of deleting a customer list is pure sophistry, since a simple message of "are you sure? Y/N" would accomplish the same thing without putting the user through hundreds of individual, single deletions.
Hi @Philidor1.
I understand how that can be frustrating, and it's fair to say that the process could be easier.
If you'd like to discuss how mass-deletion of customers would be useful to your business, I'm more than happy to hear you out. If it's an especially important feature in the context of your business, you're welcome to make it a feature request. If you want to know a bit more about how we choose new features and how to best ensure that your feature request will be seen, check out this post.
Note that bulk deletion is possible in other context within Wave. Transactions, for example, can easily be deleted in batches.
There are instances where we have inactive customers but we need to keep their records without deleting. Therefore I would like suggest a new feature to categorize customers as active and inactive. Same can be suggested to products and services. Where there are inactive products and services which need not be deleted from the system.
There needs to be another feature to be coupled with inactivating customers connected to reporting. So that when an Aged receivables report is drawn it has to be generated from active and inactive customers separately. Furthermore, I would further like to suggest to add a contact number (phone number column) to Aged receivable report (make it optional).
Thank you for your feedback, @sincela!
While Wave doesn't currently let you archive customers and products (and that is a good idea), I do have a workaround to offer. Since both these lists are alphabetical, you can send a given entry to the bottom of the list by adding a few "Z"s before its name. It isn't an elegant solution, but it might still help for now.
Thanks again for taking the time to share this!
I'd love to be able to archive old clients -- remove them from my "active" customer list but keep their data and history. Any chance of getting that option?
That'd be a pretty cool feature, tbh. I've just been sticking a bunch of Zs before their name to sink those clients to the bottom of the list. Archiving them would be a much classier way to handle that.
JenHopf, I do the same Z thing with old clients in my Dropbox projects folder. Thanks for mentioning it for a solution here!
@Kellie @JenHopf
Thanks for the feedback! I understand archiving/hiding them from the list. Are there any times where you'd want to "un-archive" a customer or is it a one-and-done type activity? Would you expect archived customers to be visually different in invoice lists, payments, transactions etc to differentiate?
Also, when, if ever, have you had to go back and deal with an "Archived" customer or their records? I want to get a sense of the use cases so we can dig into this further.
Jumping in here, in my case I have a set of regular customers that it would be nice to have at the top of the list. Kind of like starred boards in Trello.
Oh! @lesquamloon! I really like this idea!
I also have a couple of regulars, as well as a bunch of one-off clients I might never work with again.
Thanks for the feedback all!
I just spent the last 2 hours deleting customers one at a time because I tried to test a data import, assuming it could easily be deleted.
FYI, your template doesn't allow State codes to be imported.
Hey there,
My name is Zoe, Im a member of the Customer Success Team here at Wave, thank you for reaching out! I completely understand your frustration about not being able to archive/delete your Customers or Services right now! But I promise, change is coming
The reason for you not being able to Archive these things right now is because you are still using our Classic Accounting Software, This recent upgrade to our Next Accounting Software, is available for all new accounts, and existing accounts are being migrated as soon as possible. Migration takes a bit of time because different people have used different functions in Wave, resulting in more complex data to move over. We can only move an account over when we are absolutely sure we can do so while maintaining the integrity of that data and offering the functions that user might need.
Once you do get migrated over you will be able to delete your Customer by heading to Sales > Customers, and your Product/Service by heading to Sales > Products and Service, from here you can select the Customer/Service/Product you would like to delete and select the Garbage can icon beside it.
I know this isn't an immediate result, but please do sit tight
and if you have anymore questions, please get back to me!
I believe I'm in the new system and I see the ability to delete products. However, I still cannot delete any that were used on previous invoices. As suggested above, it would be good to be able to archive or hide a product so that it doesn't need to be removed from a previous invoice but will not be seen in the list of products when creating new invoices.
Hello!
I believe I've been migrated to the New Wave (I received an email about it, and can also see the new Checkouts option). I still cannot delete or archive a product that has been used on a previous invoice (nor a Customer, but I'm mostly concerned with being able to get old products/services OUT of the dropdown lists while creating new invoices. I have similar items/descriptions that I've tweaked, or things I no longer offer and it sometimes takes too long to find the right one for new invoices.
Am I missing something other than the trash can icon that will archive or hide products/services even if they have been used before?
Thanks!
If I have to delete a product or service (because it was set up incorrectly) that has been used in transactions, does the act of deleting the product or service then delete the historical transactions?
Hey @cidmoore, if a product or service is connected to an invoice or a bill, you won't be able to delete it until you remove it from the invoice or bill in question. Remember that you can edit the product at any time if you need to. If you can't fix what you need to fix with an edit, a potentially easier way to remind yourself not to use a product is just to rename it "archived - product name" so you can recreate the product correctly without risking confusion in the future. Hope that helps
@czyadgrl If you have any products/services associated with invoices that have been paid for in Wave, they may not be able to be deleted. You would need to find the corresponding transaction for that particular invoice on the Transactions page -- make sure that this is deleted, from there, delete the invoice that was meant for that specific client. Once this is done you can delete the product/service... although the information might be heavy in that section (if you have a long list) it's beneficial for you to keep this in your accounting.
Someone else had posted something similar and I responded on that post, I think I missed this message.
The paper trail for accounting purposes makes sense. But that is also why we shouldn't go back and delete old invoices/change products on old invoices so that we could delete a product from the list, I'd think?
I think what several people are asking for is actually the ability to just HIDE old products and customers from our day-to-day view when creating invoices or trying to find customer invoices. I've used several invoicing/accounting systems in the past that had ways to reduce the visual load, and make it faster/less error-prone when creating new estimates and invoices.
For example, my biz has made several subtle shifts in the products and services offered over the years.
So I can't necessarily just go through years of old invoices and delete them because a client could still come back and I want to order "the same as last time", and I would like to know what that was, without sorting through piles of emails.
But at the same time, I don't want to sort through those old products when creating new invoices and estimates. They are products that I certainly COULD sell again, but on a regular basis going forward, I don't want them to be able to be accidentally used, and I'd like to not have to go through 30 options in a dropdown on new invoices and estimates.
So I guess that the "delete/archive" requests maybe using the wrong words as I understand that those phrases send off alarm bells to accountants and bookkeepers LOL! : )
The more accurate request would be to just "hide the item (products or customers) from appearing in drop-downs on new estimates and invoices" Or maybe the products and customer listings could be toggled "active/inactive"?
Thanks!
Just wanted to agree with this comment. An ability to hide a no longer active product or service is very much needed.
Going back through invoices is simply NOT an option and should not be considered.
It's bad enough there is no audit feature in Wave without suggesting that invoices should be edited after they have been issued and paid.
@czyadgrl @ClaireWryghtAccounts I totally understand where you are coming from. One thing that I do notice a lot is that our users will need to use a onetime discount for an invoice, but it then clunks up their products & services list without actually necessarily needing to be there anymore. I like the idea of being able to archive/hide a product & services because in actuality, you shouldn't be deleting a product or service -- especially not an invoice/transaction either. I will bring up the feature request to one of the members of the development team to see if this can be something that's implemented on a future roadmap.
I would also like to see this ability, but especially for customers who I know have moved away and will not be returning in the area. We have many customers that are with us for 1-2 years and then move on, much like a school. Of course the products/services too.
Hey @MoroccoDave ! Thanks for the feedback that you've give us here.. appreciate that! If you could give a bit of an example of how this would improve your workflow in using Wave, I'd be happy to hear it -- we ask for examples because they go a long way when it comes to gathering knowledge/ideas of how we can implement specific features for the future.
Thank you for keeping this idea going, it would really streamline day-to-day invoicing and estimating to be able to hide/deactivate old products and services.
**RE: One-time discounts, **for anyone looking for a way to do that, I've found a way that works for me (very small biz and don't need to track discounts by code or source or anything like that.)... I made a product simply titled "DISCOUNT" and made the saved amount $10,000 (because that would be ridiculous in my biz and I need a cross-check/reminder to manually edit it on the invoice LOL).
When making an invoice that needs a 1-time type of discount applied, I select the DISCOUNT item I created from the drop downs. It auto-populates with $10,000 which immediately gets my attention, and I then correct the number in the amount column so that the discount is correct.
DISCOUNT totals in bookkeeping reports total up correctly without having to make a bunch of different saved "products/services".
I would like to mark certain customers inactive so they don't show up when I am looking up customers for invoices. It's not as import as hiding our old products, so we don't confuse them with newer iterations of similar products that we have created.
Same here. I don't have many repeat customers but the drop-down list of customers is getting long after several years on Wave. It would just be quicker to process invoices and estimates and manage active customers without scrolling through a long list of them each time. Would like to be able to toggle customers as "active/inactive" or "show in invoice dropdowns/hide from invoice dropdowns"
Freshbooks had these sorts of options, years ago anyway. In their case, they billed by how many active clients you had, but also gave you the option to archive/inactivate customers and products so that they weren't actively selectable when creating new estimates and invoices.
@czyadgrl @MoroccoDave Awesome feedback here, I truly appreciate what you've given us. These are definitely things we will consider when exploring different options in terms of adding the features requested in Wave. Full transparency, we still don't have any immediate attention on these two sections in Wave, but we definitely want to take a look to see what can be done to improve this in the future, so all the feedback is highly appreciated.
Another vote for the ability to archive inactive customers!