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We are using Group Items for certain assembly or kit type product sets, where a group item has child items.  The estimates themselves are being generated via an 'Insert Records into table' action followed by a push to desktop action for the estimates being created. While this did work without issue as of March 22, 2013, the print preview and generated PDF's of the estimates only show the group items (parents) without the child items.  I did not change anything within the action set nor the report designer templates between these times.

The estimateLine table is properly populated as are the estimate details upon the Estimate Screens.  Even a preview within the Report Designer appears correctly.  However, the Print Preview button on the Estimate screen (and our estimate PDFs generated by action sets) do not show the child items.

I am wondering if something has changed since the most recent update or if the PDF generation engine has changed to cause this.

Edit: I neglected to mention that I have tried saving the report designer template again just in case linking was fouled in any way...to no avail.

Hi jsenick,

You are correct, the "print items in group" option appears to have been reversed after a recent fix.  You get this back by going into Quickbooks and unchecking that option for the group item.  Make sure this is done in Quickbooks, as the SDK does not allow Group Item modifications.  This means that any third party application cannot modify existing group items.  Once you do this in Quickbooks, perform a full sync (just to make sure the changes are pushed over).  Then view the estimates again.  You may need to resave the estimate so that the individual estimate reflects the change in the group item.  After this the print preview should show each individual item in the group.

Hope this helps.

- Adam

Thank you Adam.  I'll report back as soon as I can.

- James

Adam,

The fix did not seem to work for us.  Quoting from my colleague, Jean, who works on the QB side...

jsenick:

I have unchecked the "print items in group" option on QB, did a full sync, re-tested and still no detail.
So then I checked "print items in group", did a full sync, re-tested and still no detail.
Then did the process again and still unsuccessful.

In addition to the above, I have tested the print preview after re-saving an existing estimate and after creating a new estimate.  Neither were successful.  Did we miss a step somewhere?

- James

Hi James,

It doesn't sound like you missed a step.  Are you sure the sync went through?  I tried the steps again and it worked on my end.  Try syncing again and look at the sync engine to make sure the sync went through by checking the Quickbooks tab > Synconize tab link and look the date and time of the last sync.  If the sync went through, the date and time of the last full sync should change to the current time.  In the sync engine you should also see a line indicating an item modifications (if it hasn't already updated) and estimate modifications.  After this, re-save the estimate.  This should trigger a push of the estimate to Quickbooks.  Then click the print preview in Method to see the detail of the group.

I should also note that this may change again soon.  A recent update caused this unintended behaviour to begin with and should be rectified in the future.  This is merely a short term fix.  In Quickbooks, you will get the opposite behaviour (printing detail when checked, and no detail when unchecked) so I'm sure this will change again.

Please try this out again and let me know how it turns out.

- Adam

Adam,

We are sending estimates to leads and as such are "Wait[ing] for Sync Approval" on estimates.  Will this prevent the fix you've suggested from working properly?

- James

James,

It appears it does.  It seems as though existing estimates need to get updated through Quickbooks to reflect the change.  Unfortunately, so far the only workaround I can find is to delete the line items of the group in the estimate and re-add them and save again (after modifying the group item in Quickbooks).  Any future estimates should appear as expected.  I'll keep working at this and see if I can find a better solution for you.

- Adam

Adam,

This, also, did not work for us.  A couple of notes...We've only been running tests thus far. (the date this issue arose was our chosen 'go live' date.  Go figure.) Since they are only tests, we're not concerned with existing estimates but rather newly entered ones as these are the ones staff will see as we train them.  Secondly, we did have some custom work done by Valbon and Mandeep.  I'm wondering if any custom coding magic involving the PDF generation engine is preventing either of your proposed workarounds from working for us.  Again, the Group Item's child items appear as expected in the Line Item table.  They also appear as line items (under the parent group item) on the Estimate Screen.  They even appear when doing a Preview from the Report Designer.  So, the child items are being properly pulled and referenced from the Group Item.  However, they do not appear when doing a Print Preview from the Estimate Screen.  Likewise, they are not appearing when performing a PDF estimate report from an action set.  The common thread here seems to be PDF generation.

We've been stuck at this stage for about three weeks since the staff we began training see this as an error on my part. 

Thank you for your continued help,

James 

James,

I don't think anything Val or Mandeep did would affect this, but it's hard to say for certain.  Have you tried using the stock estimate screen and the stock estimate template?  It was an update that reversed this behaviour and we're working on a fix for it.  So far, the above is the only temporary work around I've found.  I'll try to find if there are alternate solutions.

- Adam

Adam,

Thank you for the reply.  I have tried the stock estimate template and just now tried the stock estimate screen (I was not aware that we were not using the stock estimate screen until now).  No joy.  Also to clarify, I did not mean to imply that either Val or Mandeep caused the issue, rather I was just wondering if there was custom work done in regards to PDF handling for us that may not play nice with this glitch.  Thank you for your continued efforts.  

For now, we'll hard code the child items as a parent description, using multiple estimate templates.  Since the tables themselves are populating correctly, converting the estimate to an invoice should work as expected.  The only issue is display for the prospect upon the printed estimate.

- James

James,

Strange how it doesn't work with stock screens and templates.  Anyways, I'm glad you have a work around for the time being.  As I said, this is being worked on and I'll update this thread when its fixed.

- Adam

James,

The fix for this issue has been released in the May version of Method.  To switch to the May version, log out of Method.  On the sign in page, look to the bottom and you'll see an option to "Swith to the May version".  Click that and then sign in as you normally would. The group items should display as intended now.

- Adam