Documentation/ Checking the document header/ The dates
The dates on a document
A document carries up to four different dates, and muddling them is the commonest reason something "is not there" or a total will not agree with another report.
On this page
The four dates
| Date | What it is | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Document date | The one printed on the document. | Read off the original |
| Delivery date | When the goods were delivered. Delivery notes only. | Read off the original |
| Upload date | When the document arrived in Dijit.app. | Recorded by the system |
| Processed date | When the reading finished. | Recorded by the system |
The first two come off the paper and can be edited. The last two are put there by the system and cannot be changed.
Which one matters when
| For… | The one that counts |
|---|---|
| The accounts and the tax period | The document date |
| Working out the due date | The document date, plus the payment terms |
| Consolidation against delivery notes | The document date and the delivery date |
| Seeing what came in today | The upload date |
| Checking whether something got processed at all | The processed date |
| What you have used of your plan | The processed date |
An example that makes it clear
An invoice dated 28 March that the supplier sends late and that gets uploaded on 12 June:
- Its document date is in March: that is where it belongs in the accounts.
- Its upload date is in June: that is what shows when you filter on "this week".
- It costs you plan in June, which is when it was processed.
Looking for it in June by document date will not find it. Looking for it in March by upload date will not either. It is the same document seen by two different clocks.
Time zone
Dates and times are shown in the time zone set on the device, not the server's. It is a per-browser preference: the same person can see different times on two machines if they are set up differently.
It affects how things are displayed, never what was recorded. You change it in Preferences.
The usual mistakes
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A document is not in the period you expected | You are filtering on a different date from the one you think. | Check which date the filter works on. |
| A month's total will not agree with another report | One groups by document date and the other by upload date. | Make them match before you compare. |
| The document date is empty or wrong | It is not clearly on the original, or there are several dates and another one was taken. | Put it right on the record: this is not a value to leave wrong. |
| A due date that does not look right | The document date is wrong, or the payment terms are not the ones that apply. | Check both; where the due date came from is shown in the column itself. |
| Times that look shifted | The device's time zone is not yours. | Set it in Preferences, on that machine. |
What to check
Of the four, the document date is the one always worth checking, even on a clean document: no arithmetic check verifies it, and both the accounting period and the due date hang off it.
It goes wrong particularly often when the document carries several dates together: issue, delivery, due date and sometimes the order's.