Skip to content

Purchase ledger

The mirror of the sales ledger: there you count what is owed to you, here — what you owe. The same three steps in the other direction: a purchase invoice creates the debt, a payment settles it, and what is left in between is payables.

The boundary people confuse most often: a goods receipt puts goods on the balance sheet but creates no debt to the supplier. The debt is created by the purchase invoice. So goods in stock without an invoice is a normal situation — an uninvoiced delivery — and that is exactly what the balance on the purchase account shows.

Video walkthrough: Purchasing in ERPJS step by step — purchase order, goods receipt, vendor invoice, payment.

The route: from the supplier's invoice to payment

Supplier issues an invoice → debt (Cr 631) + expense or inventory
                                    ↓
                     Vendor payment → the debt is settled
  1. Vendor invoice — the document arrived. It clears the "goods without an invoice" balance and moves the debt onto a named supplier. If what you bought was a service rather than goods, the lines land straight on expense accounts.
  2. VAT invoice received (menu "VAT invoices received") — confirms the input VAT credit that the invoice or the advance has already accrued: posting it moves the VAT from unconfirmed credit to VAT settlements.
  3. Vendor payment — paid. As with customers, a payment is tied line by line: one document can settle several invoices.
  4. What stays open is the payable — the Vendor Cred Report and the Vendor Aging Report.

A special case: if what you bought is a fixed asset, the Fixed asset creation service makes it from the supplier's invoice, and from there the object lives in the fixed assets module.

What is worth understanding

A prepayment to a supplier is an asset, not an expense. You paid ahead — the money is gone but the goods are not here yet; the amount sits as an advance until the invoice arrives. The rate at which a foreign-currency advance is set off against the invoice is chosen in Prepayments Settings; the fate of each advance is shown by Prepayments Vendor History.

Payment terms are the date overdue is counted from. The same terms as in sales, applied to your own debt. They drive the Vendor Aging Report — who gets paid first; its intervals are set in Vendor Aging Report Settings.

Exchange differences are worked out on settlement. An invoice in foreign currency remembers its rate, the payment remembers its own; the system posts the difference to the exchange accounts itself.

Reconciliation with a supplier is a document, not an eyeball check. The statement of reconciliation (menu "Vendor settlements reconciliation") gathers every invoice and payment of the period into one list that both sides agree on.

Where to start in a new database

  1. Contacts — suppliers; add a Vendor Category if you need grouping and a separate payables account.
  2. Payment Terms and Payment Methods — due dates and money accounts.
  3. Prepayments Settings — if you pay advances in foreign currency; Vendor Invoice Settings — whether invoice line amounts are entered with VAT or without.
  4. The first purchase invoice — and payables are alive.

Common tasks

You need Where to go
see who you owe and how much Vendor Cred Report
work out which debts are urgent Vendor Aging Report
reconcile with a supplier Vendor settlements reconciliation
look through the suppliers' invoices of a period Vendor Invoice Report
see the movement of settlements: opening debt, turnover, closing Vendor Payments Information
gather everything about a supplier Vendor Information Report
find out what happened to one invoice: payments, advances, the debt left Vendor Invoice Status
turn a purchase into a fixed asset Fixed asset creation

Everything in the module

Registers — documents: Vendor Invoices · Vendor Payments · VAT invoices received

Registers — references: Contacts · Vendor Category · Payment Terms · Items · Units

Settings: Payment Methods · Prepayments Settings · Vendor Aging Report Settings · Vendor Invoice Settings

Reports: Vendor Invoice Report · Vendor Cred Report · Vendor Aging Report · Vendor settlements reconciliation · Vendor Payments Journal · Vendor Payments Information · Vendor Information Report · Vendor Invoice Status · Prepayments Vendor History

Maintenances: Fixed asset creation · Xlsx Import · Xlsx Export

Where to look next