Payables — what you owe your suppliers

Menu: Inventory → Payables · Inventory → Supplier payments · Inventory → Supplier returns · Inventory → Purchases · Who: owner, branch manager (adjusting an account is the owner's)

The khata answers kitna lena hai. This answers the other half: kitna dena hai.

A distributor drops twenty crates on Monday and you take them. Sellify has always known the cheese is on your shelf at Rs 840 a kilo. What it could not say is that you owe Rs 47,000 for it. This is that page.

Putting a bill on the account

On account is a switch on the purchase itself, beside the supplier it would be owed to — Inventory → Purchases → New purchase, or open a draft and edit it.

Under the switch Sellify tells you when the money would fall due, read off that supplier's own terms: Due 30 days after delivery, or Due on delivery where nobody has set any. Terms live on the supplier (Inventory → Suppliers → Payment terms), so you set them once and every bill you put on that account follows.

A bill on account has to name a supplier. A debt owed to nobody would sit on no statement and show on no report, so Sellify refuses it rather than taking it.

A delivery becomes a debt when the goods arrive

Not when the purchase order is written — a draft owes nobody anything, and you can move the switch on and off as often as you like until the goods land.

Receive into stock is what puts the bill on the supplier's page at the same moment it puts the goods on your shelf. One or the other, never half. That is also the moment the due date is worked out and frozen onto the bill: renegotiating terms next year does not move what this delivery was due.

A delivery you paid for at the door is not on account and never appears here.

It was cash and it was really on the khata

That happens. Open the delivery and press Correct — the same button you would use for a rate typed wrong — and move the On account switch.

The account moves by the difference, in one line, with your reason on the record. Nothing is un-delivered and re-delivered: a supplier's statement showing goods sent back and returned is a phone call from somebody who did neither. The due date is worked out from the day the goods landed, so a bill put right a week later is not due a week later.

The same button takes a bill back off the account when it turns out it was paid at the door after all.

Reading an account

Inventory → Payables. The left column is every supplier, heaviest debt first, with the terms you agreed under the name. Pick one.

• Owed now — positive is what you owe them. Negative means you are paid ahead: money sitting with them, or a debit note worth more than the bills still open.
• Open bills — what is still outstanding, oldest first, with their own invoice number beside yours and a Past due badge on anything past the day it was due.
• The statement — every row that got the account where it is: deliveries billed, money paid, goods sent back. Each row carries the balance it left behind, so the closing figure is read rather than added up.

The total at the top is what you owe across all suppliers. Money you have paid ahead is not netted off it: that is your money sitting with one distributor and it does not pay another one's bill.

Paying a supplier

Payables → the supplier → Pay them.

Money left over is not an error. It stands as an advance and lands on the next delivery by itself.

Paying a supplier is not an expense, and Sellify will never report it as one. The cost of those goods went into your books the day they were received — onto the shelf, into the item's cost, and onto your profit & loss as cost of sales when they sold. Counting the cheque as a spend as well would count the same rupee twice and make every outlet read as losing money on everything it buys. What the payment moves is the account.

Who sees Suppliers on the till. An owner and a branch manager always. A cashier only where both switches under Settings → Expenses are on: A cashier may record what was paid out of the till, and A cashier may pay a supplier out of the till. Turning the second one off hides Suppliers from a cashier and leaves their Expenses exactly as they were; the server refuses the payment too.

Your drawer still knows about it. Cash handed over a counter is subtracted from expected cash at day close, under a head of its own — never mixed in with expenses.

The register — every payment you have made

Menu: Inventory → Supplier payments

The account answers what you owe a distributor today. The register answers what you actually handed over, and when — which is the page you open when a supplier's statement disagrees with yours and the argument is about one cheque in March.

It is this branch's book, and follows the branch picker at the top of the screen. What is owed is company-wide, because a supplier delivering to four shops is owed one debt; a payment came out of one outlet's drawer, box or bank.

Narrow it by supplier, by where the money came out of, and by a date range. Against tells you at a glance what each payment closed:

Open a row to see what it closed, who recorded it, and the cheque number.

Saying which bills a payment was really for

Sellify puts money against the oldest bill first, which is what a supplier chases and what is right almost always. It is wrong exactly when they insist a particular cheque was for a particular delivery.

Open the payment and press Say which bills. Type what belongs against each bill and save. Every open bill on that account is listed, and so is any bill this payment has already closed — that is the one you are usually moving money off.

Sellify refuses three things, each in a sentence that names the bill:

• more than the payment was worth, spread across the lot
• more than a bill is actually owed
• the same bill named twice

No money moves. The balance was settled the day the notes were handed over; all this changes is which invoice reads as paid on the statement. That is why it is the owner's and the branch manager's, and not a cashier's.

Leaving every box empty is a real answer: it takes the payment off every bill and leaves the whole of it standing as an advance against the next delivery.

Sending goods back

Two crates were rotten. They go back in the van and the account comes down.

Inventory → Purchases → the delivery → Send back. Type what went back against each line; the rest is Sellify's:

• The goods leave at the cost they came in at, so what that delivery added to your average cost is exactly what comes off it.
• The input tax goes back with the crates, pro rata, so your claim comes down with them.
• The supplier's account is credited, and if that bill is now fully settled it stops showing as open.

You can only send back what is still on the shelf from that delivery — counted across every debit note you have ever raised against it, so nothing can go back twice. Goods already sold are refused by name.

A debit note is not a correction. A correction says the invoice was typed wrong; a debit note says the crates were rotten and went back, which is a real event on its own day. The two buttons sit beside each other because that is the choice you are making.

There is no time limit. Your supplier's terms are your supplier's business.

The register — every debit note you have raised

Menu: Inventory → Supplier returns · Who: owner, branch manager

A note is raised on the delivery it came off, which is the only place its lines exist. It is read back here: one row per debit note, newest first, for this branch. Narrow it by supplier and by a date range.

Open a row for the crates themselves: how many of each, what they came in at, what that line credited, and the input tax that went back with them.

It is not the Supplier returns report. That one (Reporting → Payables → Supplier returns) lists the same notes and adds them up over a month — which is the right page for "how much did we send back this quarter". It cannot say what was on a note, and that is what an argument with a distributor is actually about: not a note for Rs 220 in March, but which crates.

Nothing on this screen writes. A note's figures are the bill's own frozen ones and the stock has already moved, so a note raised wrong is put right where the reason and the record are — on the delivery, or as a stock adjustment.

What you owed before Sellify

Payables → the supplier → Opening balance, shown only while the account has no rows on it yet. It is written once: after that a correction is an adjustment.

Adjusting an account

Payables → the supplier → Adjust the account — the owner's, or anybody they have given the right to write a debt off.

Every one needs a reason. It is the only thing that can answer for that row later.

The reports

Under Payables on the reports page:

• Supplier statement — one distributor's account over a range, opening with what was brought forward. This is what you read their own statement against.
• Payables aging — what you owe, bucketed by how old the bill is, with a separate Past due column for what has actually gone past its terms. A supplier who gives you sixty days is owed nothing at day forty-five, however old that bill looks.
• Purchases by supplier — what each one supplied, what went back and what you paid. Bought is every delivery; On account is the part that went on the book, so the distributor you pay cash every morning still appears.
• Supplier returns — every debit note you raised, one row each. This is the page you open when their statement disagrees with yours.