2. How work flows through the system¶
Read this chapter once. It is short, and it explains why the rest of the system is shaped the way it is. Most questions of the form "where is the button to make an invoice?" are answered here.
Two chains¶
Almost everything in the business is one of two chains, and each step in a chain creates the document for the next step.
Selling:
Sales order → approval → goods sent out → invoice → payment received
Buying:
Purchase order → approval → goods booked in → supplier bill → payment made
You start the chain by entering an order. After that, you never fill in a blank form again: you open the document you already have and use the Actions menu on it to create the next one.
Why there is no blank invoice form¶
You cannot raise an invoice out of nothing, and this is on purpose. An invoice is raised from the sales order whose goods have gone out, so the two stay joined: the order knows what it was invoiced for, the invoice knows what it was for, and nobody has to remember the connection.
The same is true of supplier bills, customer payments, supplier payments and credit notes. Each one is created from the document it belongs to.
Note
If you are looking for a "new invoice" button and cannot find one, you are at the wrong end of the chain. Go to Transactions → Sales → Create Invoices, find the order, and raise it from there.
Worklists — your to-do lists¶
Seven menu items are not lists of things that exist; they are lists of things waiting for you to act. Each one opens the documents that are in exactly the state where that action is available, and tells you what to do next.
| Menu item | What is in it | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Fulfill Orders | Approved sales orders with stock still to go out | Open one, use Fulfill |
| Create Invoices | Orders already delivered and not yet billed | Open one, use Bill (Create Invoice) |
| Accept Customer Payments | Invoices with money still owed | Open one, use Accept Payment |
| Receive Orders | Purchase orders with goods still to arrive | Open one, use Receive |
| Enter Bills | Orders received but not yet billed by the supplier | Open one, use Bill |
| Pay Bills | Supplier bills with money still owed | Open one, use Pay Bill |
| Credit Memos | Credit notes already issued | Reference only — see chapter 3 |
An order that is half sent appears in both Fulfill Orders and Create Invoices, correctly: it has stock still to send and value already delivered.
Note
An empty worklist is good news, and it says so — "Every bill is paid", "Nothing is waiting to be fulfilled". If the list could not be loaded at all it says that instead, in red. The two are never confused: the system will not tell you there is nothing to do when it does not know.
Every document screen looks the same¶
Whatever the document — order, invoice, bill, payment, journal — you get the same screen:
- The type and number at the top, with a coloured badge showing where it has got to.
- Primary Information — date, who it is with, currency, memo.
- Classification — company, department, class, location.
- Summary — subtotal, tax, total, and on invoices and bills the amount still due.
- Items — the lines. The Processed column is the one to read: it is how much of each line has already been sent, received or billed.
- Accounting — the bookkeeping entries the document made. Orders make none until they are fulfilled or received, and the tab says so.
- Related Records — every other document joined to this one. This is how you get from an invoice back to its order, or from an order to the delivery.
- Custom — any extra fields your administrator has added for this kind of document.
- System Information — who created it and when.
Nothing is deleted¶
The system does not delete documents, users, roles or history. Instead:
- A document is voided, and you must give a reason. Its ledger entries are reversed with new ones, so last month's reports do not change underneath you.
- A user is disabled, not removed, because their name is on every approval and delivery they ever touched.
- A price, a salary or an exchange rate is corrected by adding a new record with a date, never by editing the old one — otherwise reprinting last year's document would use this year's figures.