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Sales ledger

The module answers two questions: how much is owed to us and what for. It holds sales invoices, customer payments, VAT invoices and everything that adds up to receivables.

The boundary with its neighbours is simple. A sales order is a promise to sell. A shipment is the fact that goods left. And an invoice is the fact that money exists: it is what creates the customer's debt and the company's revenue. So stock can move without an invoice, but receivables cannot appear without one.

Video walkthrough: Sales in ERPJS step by step — quotation, sales order, shipment, invoice, payment.

The route: from invoice to a settled debt

Invoice → customer debt (Dr 361) + revenue (Cr 70x) + VAT
    ↓                                   ↓
 VAT invoice                  Customer payment → the debt is settled
  1. Invoice — issued. Posting debits receivables and credits revenue and VAT liabilities. If the document has "Update warehouse" ticked, the cost of sale goes through here as well.
  2. VAT invoice issued (menu "VAT Invoices Issued") — a separate document for the tax authority. It lives its own life: its own types, failure reasons and adjustment reasons, and it leaves the system through the Export archive for Medok service.
  3. Customer payment — the money arrived. A payment is tied to invoices line by line: one payment can settle several invoices, one invoice can be made up of several payments.
  4. Whatever stays unsettled is the receivable — shown by the Unpaid invoices and Customer Debt Report reports.

What is worth understanding

A prepayment is a payment without an invoice. The customer paid ahead — the money sits against them as an advance until an invoice appears to tie it to. The Customer Prepayments History keeps track of those amounts.

Payment terms govern dates, not amounts. The customer card and the invoice carry payment terms — how many days to pay and from which date to count them; the system calculates no early settlement discount. They produce the date after which a debt is overdue, and that is what the Client Aging Report is built on; its intervals are set in Client Aging Report Settings.

The payment method decides the money account. A payment method is not "cash or card" for a report — it says which financial account the payment lands on. A mistake here shows up in the trial balance immediately.

Currency lives on the invoice, not on the customer. The invoice remembers the rate of its date; the payment remembers its own. The difference between them is an exchange difference, and the system works it out when the debt is settled.

Where to start in a new database

  1. Contacts — customers; plus addresses, categories and classifications if you need grouping; codes of new cards come from Serial Number Range for Contacts.
  2. Payment Terms and Payment Methods — without them an invoice knows neither its due date nor its money account.
  3. Invoice Setting — whether an invoice moves stock, whether it may be issued before shipment, whether it is created and approved automatically, the default customer and payment term, how VAT is calculated.
  4. The first invoice — and receivables are alive.

Common tasks

You need Where to go
see who owes what Customer Debt Report
find overdue debt by age Client Aging Report
reconcile with a customer for a period Settlements reconciliation
see what a customer has not paid Unpaid invoices
find out what happened to one invoice: payments, credit notes, advances Invoice Status Report
gather everything about a customer Customer Information Report
hand VAT invoices over to M.E.Doc Export archive for Medok
look through the invoices issued in a period Invoice (a journal report)

Everything in the module

Registers — documents: Invoices · Payments · VAT Invoices Issued

Registers — references: Contacts · Addresses · Customer Category · Contact Classifications · Contact Classification Type · Payment Terms · Items · Units · VAT Invoice Types · VAT Invoice Fail Reasons · VAT Invoice Adjustment Reasons · Booking (an online booking page: a confirmed booking yields a task and an invoice)

Settings: Payment Methods · Invoice Setting · Client Aging Report Settings · Serial Number Range for Contacts

Reports: Invoice · Customer Payments Journal · Unpaid invoices · Customer Debt Report · Client Aging Report · Settlements reconciliation · Customer Payments Information · Customer Information Report · Contacts Report · Invoice Status Report · VAT Invoice Status Report · Customer Prepayments History · Sales Report Detail

Maintenances: Export archive for Medok · Xlsx Import · Xlsx Export

Where to look next