I have a bug similar to this answered question: js/jQuery Drag'n'Drop, recalculate the drop targets
If a user has a draggable move around the layout, and change the position of the droppable, $.ui.ddmanager.prepareOffsets can be called to reset the offset. This is the answer in the above ticket.
I have a sortable with a cloned helper that still fires the receive callback on my droppable, even though it should only work with draggables ( receive callback works ). So it seems the helper is running like a fake draggable because it can interact but doesn't have .data('draggable').
Do I need to explicitly make each item in my sortable a draggable or is there another way to use $.ui.ddmanager.prepareOffsets that I missed?
For another example of using prepareOffsets check out: http://rubberflat.com/2010/06/refresh-jquery-ui-droppable-area-after-shifting-position/
On sort start I make sure the sortable helper gets ui.helper.draggable()