Documentation/ Accounting/ Coding a document
Coding a document
A document's header has a section of its own for accounting: the actual accounts that document will be posted with. They arrive filled in from the records, and are corrected here when the case departs from the general policy.
Document › header › Accounting
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The section's fields
| Field | What it says | Appears on |
|---|---|---|
| Expense account | Where the document's spend is posted. | Purchases and expenses |
| Income account | Where the income is posted. | Sales |
| Supplier account | The creditor's sub-account. | Purchases and expenses |
| Client account | The debtor's sub-account. | Sales |
| VAT sub-account | The account for input or output tax. | Depends on the set-up |
| Withholding account | The account for the withholding applied. | Documents with withholding (IRPF) |
| Cost centre | The area it is charged to. | Depends on the set-up |
| Paid or collected in cash | Whether the document is settled through the till. | Depends on the set-up |
Not all of them always appear: the section adapts to the document's type and to how the account is set up. A purchase document shows no income account, and one with no withholding needs no withholding account.
Expense account and income account
Two sides of the same question: what the invoice is for. The expense account is used on purchases and expenses; the income account, on sales.
The expense account arrives filled in from the supplier's record, which holds their usual expense account. Changing it here affects this document only: it is what to do when a supplier who normally invoices supplies sends, that once, a repair.
If the policy has changed permanently, the right move is to change it on the supplier's record rather than document by document.
Supplier account and client account
These identify who is owed and who owes. The supplier account comes from the supplier's record; the client account, from the client's.
They rarely need touching on the document: a company has a single sub-account per supplier. When they come up empty, it almost always means the relevant record has no account assigned, and that is where it should be put right.
Cost centre
This splits the spend by area, department or site. It is picked from the list of centres created, and the header itself lets you create a new cost centre as you go, with its code and its name, without leaving the document.
It is the field that answers the question of what each part of the business spends on, which no nominal account answers on its own.
Paid or collected in cash
This is a switch. Turned on, it says the document is settled through the till, and that changes the entry generated. The application explains it itself:
Turn it on if the invoice is paid through the till. Monitor will generate the payment entry using the supplier's or client's sub-account and the bank account set on the client's record.
It therefore depends on something that is not on the document: the company's bank account. If that account is not set, the application warns you as you turn the switch on and tells you the payment entry will not be generated until it is set on the client's record.
Creating an account without leaving this screen
At the foot of the section there is a link to create a new nominal account. A dialogue opens with three fields, code, name and company, and the account is created in the chart like any other.
It saves the trip of going to the accounts screen, creating it and coming back to the document having lost what you had typed. It is the natural route when you find a sub-account missing just as you are coding.
What overrides what
- What is written on the document is what gets posted.
- If the document does not carry it, what the supplier's or client's record says is used.
- If the record has not got it either, the field stays empty and the document cannot be sent to destinations that insist on it.
Hence the advice to set the records up properly: the better they are, the less there is to touch on each document.
Things that come up
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The document's accounts arrive empty | The supplier's or client's record has none assigned. | Assign them on the record; later documents will bring them on their own. |
| The account searches return nothing | No chart of accounts is loaded, or it is filtered to another company. | Load the chart, or check the document's company. |
| Ticking cash collection brings up a warning | The company has no bank account set. | Set it on the company's record. Without it there is no payment entry. |
| The spend was posted to the wrong account | The supplier's record has an account that does not suit this document. | Correct it on the document for a one-off; on the record if it is permanent. |
| The income account field is not there | The document is a purchase or an expense. | That is how it is meant to work: the income account belongs to sales. |