Using the Invoice, Debit Note, Credit Note and Purchase Order subsystems

HyperLedger comes with built-in support for the issuance of invoices, purchase orders, cash bills, debit notes, credit notes, receipts and payment vouchers. You may use these document issuing subsystems to automate the preparation of commercial documents as well as posting entries to the respective account and stock ledgers. Using the document subsystems, it is possible for users without bookkeeping and accounting knowledge to make almost all the necessary accounting entries that are found in a full set of accounts, provided that the document subsystems are set up correctly.

As for those who are GST-registered, the use of the various document issuing subsystems is a must because this is where the GST reports would get the data for analysis for filing GST returns and for exporting into the GST Audit File that is required by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department.

Let's start with the invoicing subsystem first, but the description below is quite similar with the rest of the other document subsystems.  To use the Invoice subsystem, click the Invoices icon from the Data Entry menu:

You would then reach the Invoices Menu:

Before using the Invoices subsystem to issue invoices for the first time, you should configure it first by clicking on the Invoice Setup... command to get to the following form:

Firstly, enter the next invoice number that would be issued in the Next No column. This number would be automatically be incremented by 1, once a new invoice has been issued, so you do not need to change this again and again. The Number of Digits field is to specify how many digits that your invoice numbers have. For example, if you specify the Number of Digits to be 7 and your next number is 135, then your invoice number would be 0000135.

The Prefix field is used for inserting in some characters into the front of the invoice number, For example, if you put in A in the prefix column, your invoice number may appear as A0000135. The most common prefixes used are INV,PV,DO,CN,RC,PO etc. for the easy identification of different documents. The Postfix field is for inserting some characters into the back of the invoice number, which is seldom used, such as 0000135K.

The Output Definition File field is for specifying the filename of a file that is used for formatting the output of the invoice. HyperLedger comes with many standard output definition files. To choose from a list of files available, you may double-click this field and the list would appear. Because the output definition files are normal text files, you may edit it and modify it to suit your requirements by clicking the Edit definition file. If you wish to edit and change any definition files, it is best that you save them into a different filename. For those who would be using the invoicing subsystem to issue GST Tax Invoices, you may choose to change this field to GSTINV.TXT, so that your GST invoices would have a GST summary at the bottom of the invoice. Those who want to print Delievery Orders and Invoices together, may choose the INVDO.TXT as the output definition file.

The Unit Price Precision is normally set at 2 digits after the decimal point, but for those who require it, you may change it to more digits after the decimal point.

The Category/Stock Ledger field is for specifying the ledger number of your stock ledger that would be linked to this invoicing subsystem. You may double-click on this field to choose from a list of ledgers, or you may key in directly. This field is optional, so if you do not specify a ledger number, you cannot use the invoicing system to pick products and services that you sell and so you must key in manually. Also, if you do not specify a stock control ledger number, you cannot post to stocks automatically from the invoicing subsystem.

The Default A/C to Credit is the account number of the income account that would be credited automatically when you post invoices to the accounts ledger. If you are a trading company, the usual account to credit would be Sales, so please specify the account number of your Sales account. For service-only businesses, the number of income accounts to credit may be more than one and so it is necessary to specify a Default A/C to Credit in the individual products in the Stock Control Ledger. In situations where the individual products has no account specified, the default account to credit would be used, so the default account to credit field must not be left empty. You may double-click this field to pick from a list of accounts.

The Special Options field is normally left empty as it is used for some customised or special functions. Here are some options that you may enter in this field.
a) <Offset> Automatic delivery order numbering. Examples: If you want to have the DO number the same as the invoice, add <0> into this field. Or if you want the DO number to be 10000 added to the invoice number, add <10000> into this field. If you want the DO number to be 532 less than the invoice number, add <-532> into this field.
b) {accno} Automatic account number to debit. Usually this is used for Cash Bills. For example, if you want to automatically choose the account number RC (Retail Customer) to debit, add {RC} into this field.

With the invoicing configuration set up, you may proceed to issue new invoices, by clicking on the New Invoice... button, to get to the Issue Invoice form:

Notice at the top of the form there is an indication that GST Mode is ON. If no GST ID was entered in GST Setup, then the invoice would not go into GST Mode. If GST Mode is ON, then there are some extra fields that is specifically related to GST would be available for entering, such as Country, Foreign Currency Code, Exchange Rate and the Import Declaration Number. Of course, if the purchase or sale is not related to imports or exports, then those fields may be left empty. And if GST Mode is ON, then the TC (Tax Code) column would be automatically filled if a product was selected that has been assigned a GST tax code.

To begin issuing an invoice, please enter a date at the date field in the form of ddmmyyyy, or double click on it to choose from a list. When finished, press the Tab key to move to A/C# field. At the A/C # field, please key in the account number of the customer that you are selling to, or double-click to choose from a list of accounts. If the account exists, the Name, Address, Salesman and Credit Terms fields would be filled automatically.

Press the Tab key to move from A/C# field to the D.O, P.O, Salesman No. and Terms fields and fill then up if required. Next we enter the line items.

At the Qty column, you may enter a quantity value (just the number, such as 36) and then a spacing and press the Tab key to move to the Description column. At the Description column, you may key in a product number (example: 101) and the full product name would appear in the description column, with the Unit Price, Amt, and TC columns automatically filled, if the product number exists and you have entered the stock control ledger number in the Invoicing Setup.

If you leave the Qty column empty and if you entered a product that has a unit name, then the Qty column would automatically be filled with quantity 1.

If you have forgotten the product number, you may double-click on the Description column and you may pick a product from a list. The TC column would be automatically be filled if GST Mode is ON and the GST amount would be automatically added if the product is a standard rated product. Here's an example of how the form would look like:

The TC (Tax Code) column may be filled or changed manually by direct entering a code or by double-clicking it, and the following list appears if you are in invoices, debit notes and credit notes:

In the case of purchase orders, the double-clicking of the TC column, shows the following list:

If the sale is an export (or an import, in the case of Purchaser Orders), then you need to fill in other GST fields, by clicking the Other GST fields... button:

Import Declaration Number field is only meant for imports. In the Country field, you key in the full name of the country, example: Australia
Example of Foreign Currency Codes are USD, SGD, JPY etc.
The last column is for the conversion rate in terms of our local ringgit with the foreign currency. Example : 3.2152 for USD

For purchase orders, if the Country field is filled with the name of a country, then the TC columns would be automatically filled with the default tax code IM instead of the normal TX. In any case, you may change the TC columns manually should you think that any tax code was given wrongly.

Continuing with the example, we may see something like this in the invoice form when complete:

If the user wants to see how the invoice would look like, he may click the Print Preview button to view and print out the invoice.

If the invoice has been completed, the user may choose to save the invoice and exit. Once saved, the user may edit the saved invoice if he has the right access level password.

Once your invoices has been finalised and saved, you may decide if you want to post the invoices to the accounts and stock control ledgers, and to do that, you may choose either Post Invoices to Accounts,,, or Post Invoices to Stock Control... commands from the Invoices Menu. For example if I want to post the just concluded invoice number 007301 to the accounts, I would key in this in the Post Invoices to Accounts... form:

You may double-click on the From and To fields to choose from the list of invoices saved. The Post automatically option is for the command to post to the accounts without showing you what exactly are posted. If you wish to see what is posted and to modify the contents, if required, then you may choose not to post automatically. For example, if the Post automatically option is set off and you click the Post those with numbers button, you would see the following screen:

From here, if you decide to accept what is about to be posted, then you click the Post Entries (F10) button, and the entries would be posted to the accounts ledger. If you wish to modify the entries, you may do so before clicking the Post Entries button, of if you wish to cancel the posting, please click the Exit (X) button.

Just like with Post Invoices to Accounts..., the Post Invoices to Stock Control... command has the similar menu, so if you wish to see what is about to be posted, uncheck the Post automatically option and you may see something like this:

So, just like the Accounts Posting preview, you may choose to edit the entries before you click the Post Entries (F10) button or to cancel the posting by clicking Exit (X).

Conclusion 
As you can see, by using the various document issuing subsystems, you can end up saving a lot of work because you may use it to automate the recalling of customer or supplier names, product names, unit names, prices, and tax codes as well as to automatically post the entries to the respective debtors, creditors, incomes and expenses, GST input tax and GST output tax accounts and also to the stock control. And the best thing is that the user may not necessarily requires any accounting knowledge to perform them.