Forum Message

link 'purchase invoice' line items to 'customer invoice' line items?

Trying to organise Solar so that items I'm buying on behalf of clients will always appear on invoices, and not fall between the cracks as they have been doing.

typical sequence of events for my business:
- interior design 3x rooms for 3x different clients: X, Y, and Z
- visit supplier A; purchase 3x table lamps, 2x bookcases, 4x chairs, 3x cushions using credit card
- visit supplier B; purchase 6x chairs, 2x shelves using credit card
- enter credit card purchases into Solar as 'money paid out'
- keep paper copy of credit card receipt with handwritten notes against each line item saying which client it's for.
- visit client X; install lamps and bookcase
- visit client Y; install chairs and cushions
- visit client Z; install lamp and chair and shelves
- invoice clients X, Y, Z - which requires finding paper credit card receipts with line items and handwriting alongside each item indicating which client it should be assigned to and subsequently invoiced.

even if the credit card purchases were entered into Solar as 'Purchase Invoice' and broken out as line items, there's no way to cross reference each line with lines on client invoices.

Is there a more straightforward way of getting Solar to do this?


Posted by Hanna Branca on Feb 27, 2012 5:05 PM GMT

Hi Hanna,

Solar Accounts is not designed to associate line items from a single purchase to multiple clients. A workaround would be to create a new expense account called 'Unallocated Expense' and allocate your purchases to this account. Then record three General Transactions (one each for X, Y and Z) from the 'Unallocated Expense' account to 'Cost of Goods Sold'. Each of these general transactions can then be associated with a different job (ie. Job X, Job Y and Job Z) by clicking the 'Options' button in the bottom-left corner of the transaction window. (You can also associate the sales invoice with that job so that Solar Accounts can calculate the profit for each job). Note that the Transactions list can be filtered to pick up any General Transactions which have not been assigned to a client job.

Regards,


Posted by Mark McLaren (Solar Accounts) on Feb 28, 2012 8:53 AM GMT

Another user has pointed out an error in the above approach. The 'Unallocated Expense' account should be an asset, not an expense account - in this way the cost for each job will be recorded correctly when the General Transaction is created.


Posted by Mark McLaren (Solar Accounts) on Sep 24, 2012 4:29 PM BST