We have a new installation of 7.2.30. I can import Items with no problem, but I’m not understanding the difference between Submitting them and Saving them. I have Submit after Import checked, and I verified that another user can see the Items just imported, so the imported Items are in the database. But when I select an imported Item it shows as not saved until I click that button.
So my fundamental question is what is the difference between submitted and saved?
After that, is there a way to do both at the same time? We will be importing thousands of Items and having to do all the saves manually is less than optimal, for sure.
Submit only make sense in transactions, like “Sales Orders”, “Sales Invoices”, “Quotes” etc, where you need that the document reach an not modifiable state after the save.
For reach this state, the transaction need to be submitted!
So if I understand you correctly, there seems to be no real purpose to having the Submit feature for Item import, since I will need to Save the Item manually anyway? Items are modifiable after Save anyway, as far as I can tell.
I’m still unclear on what Save and Submit are actually doing, particularly with respect to Item import. This has to be a really basic concept of how the data is stored and manipulated by ERPNext. Alas, the Concepts and Terms section of the Manual doesn’t really address this type of thing.
For example, in the manual it says: “Overwriting data from Data Import Tool works only for the saved transactions, and not for Submitted ones.” And this says: “To edit submitted document, you need to cancel it first. Followings are steps to edit submitted document.” and then it goes on to talk about the Amending process.
So just reading this says to me that Save should happen before Submit, yet it appears that imported Items that are Submitted are not also Saved. Is there any dependence or order-of-precedence requirement for Submit and Save, particularly for Items?
I’m starting with Items because our needs are foremost to get a better handle on inventory. We need to import Items first to be able to link them into BOMs.
One last thing I found is a reference (here) to developer docs that talk about Save and Submit on the server side. A link to that reference might answer my question.
Chip, I agree that Submit has no real purpose when performing an Item import. I just tested myself by creating some test items in a CSV, and importing them. Worked perfectly, without marking the “Submit” checkbox. I verified and the Items were usable. I created a stock entry immediately after, with no extra steps.
Here’s my interpretation. For most records, just import with no boxes checked. Your data should automatically be saved in the database.
The “Submit” would be useful when you’re importing specific data such as Purchase Orders. If you just import and only Save, they will be in a Draft status, and not usable for product receipts. However, if you also Submit. Then the Purchase Order would be imported into the database, and the status would be To Receive and Bill. So you could immediately take actions on that PO. This saves you the effort of having to submit all those POs manually, one at a time.
I have not tested this. But it seems reasonable, given what I’ve learned on this product so far.
Ideally? There should be a way of tagging certain documents (data) as being eligible for “Submit”, while the rest are not. That way on the Import screen, the Submit checkbox could be Visible vs. Hidden (or at least greyed out), when it’s not applicable to the data you’re importing.
Chip, What did you determine to be the right way to get your already imported “Items” to be saved? I have also run into this issue after importing a very large number of “Items” and then going back and loading the buy and sell prices as well as the item_attributes. I don’t look forward to saving each single item one at a time (11,200 times)
Did you have to flush them all and start again, or was there a way to get them all saved in bulk?
Thanks in advance for your input.
BKM
btw… Your name is familiar to me as a programmer I once worked with in Maryland many years ago. Small world, eh?
I have not solved the “Saved” problem, but it does not seem to affect the usefulness of the Items imported. So for now I am allowing them to remain Heathens until I need to touch them for some reason. The only problem I have seen on the imported Items is a search problem in a customized field I added for Approved Manufacturers & Part Numbers. One of our software guys who understands Python a helluva lot better than me is looking into it.
Alas, BK, I don’t think I’m the same Chip Brown you remember. I’ve been in the Atlanta area for a long time on the electronic hardware side of things, with some occasional really low-level programming as required.
@ChipBrown
Thanks for getting back to me on this. I was concerned the “Un-Saved” list of “Items” might cause me trouble at some point. So for now I guess I will just leave them alone.
I did find that checking every possible box I could find in the Role Permissions as well as every user permission I could get to from the role permission screen eventually allowed other uses to see everything in the Item module, so there was some progress today.