Sales Invoice Integration to Sage¶

The first thing that needs to be done is to make sure that all the correct settings are made in Administration > Parameters.
The following options are available.

Post Retail Invoices – if you make retail sales and wish to update invoices to Sage, this must be ticked, otherwise you will not be able to update invoices for customers with trade type = retail.

Manual Batch Post Receipts to Sage – if you want to manually post receipts to Sage, either as individual amounts or as batched amounts, then this option should be switched on. If this is switched on, ‘Post Retail Invoices’ and ‘Post Deposits and Balances to Sage’ will be switched off.

Update and Allocate Receipts to Invoices – if you wish to post and allocate receipts in Sage, then this option should be switched on.
If ‘Post Retail Invoices’ is also switched on, then invoices and receipts for the same order will be allocated to each other in Sage.
If this option is switched on, ‘Manual Batch Post Receipts to Sage’ will be switched off.
Also, if you are going to use this option, you must make sure that you have the following set up:

Administration > System Tables > Nominal Codes – if you are posting receipts you will need to make sure there is a bank nominal code in this table.

Administration > System Tables > Receipt Description – you will need to make sure one of these records is ticked as a deposit.

The following items can also affect what gets posted to Sage:¶

Use Customer Nominal for Posting to Sage – if this is ticked, the nominal code for a detail line will be taken from the customer record instead of from the blind type record.

Post Full Invoice – if the entire invoice is to be posted to the invoice module in Sage, this should be ticked.
This means you will not be printing out any invoices in Blindata; they will all be printed in Sage.

Use Cust. Ord. No. Instead of Cust Ref. – if ticked, the customer order number instead of the customer reference will be updated to Sage.

Update Departments When Posting – if this is switched on, then the department number will get updated to Sage.
This is held in the Branch No field in the Department table in Administration > System Tables.

Update Order No To Ref – if this is switched on, the Order Number from Blindata will get posted to the Ref field.

Trade and retail invoicing¶

There are two different ways that customers can be set up in the system: either trade type = trade or trade type = retail.

Trade Sales Invoicing¶

Trades sales invoices are relatively straightforward and are used for trade, commercial or contract customers.

Sales orders can be turned into invoices once an order has a status of ‘Despatched’.
There are two different methods of doing this, either individually or by batching records.
Individually, an invoice can be created by clicking on ‘Create Invoices’ in the Order Amend Enquiry form.

If you wish to create a large number of invoices at once, this can be done in Financials > Create Invoices.

Printing Invoices¶

You will need to ensure that the correct reports have been set up.
You can do this by checking in Administration > Parameters > Reports. You can set the report name and the printer here.

Once invoices have been printed and checked, they need to be posted to Sage.
The invoices that are to be posted can be viewed by looking in Financials > Post Invoices to Sage.

The only orders that will appear on this form are those with status = Invoice Printed. Only those orders with this status can be updated to Sage.

There are three further processes that should be carried out:

Run Validation – this routine is run to make sure that all invoices contain the correct data for importing to Sage.
The system checks both account references and nominal codes.
If there is a problem, a message will appear telling you where the validation has failed.

Print Audit Trail – this prints out an audit of all the validated records that are to be posted to Sage.

Post Invoices – this will post the properly validated invoices to Sage.

Alternatively, the invoices can be printed out and posted individually in the Order Amend Enquiry form.

Archive¶

Once an invoice has been posted to Sage, it will only be visible in the Archive Enquiry form, in Order Processing > Archive Enquiry.

Retail Sales Invoices¶

These are the different cases that can be set for the parameters. Let us call the parameters 1-4 as follows:

1. Post Retail Invoices
2. Post Deposits and Balances to Sage
3. Manual Batch Post Receipts to Sage
4. Update and Allocate Receipts to Invoices

If you are proposing to switch on option 4, you must ensure that you set up the correct bank nominal codes in the system.
This can be done by going to Administration > System Tables > Nominal codes and setting up the codes.
If you only use one bank nominal code, then you will only need to set up one.
If you use more than one, you will need to identify the default code, and then set up the respective nominal codes against the receipt types.
This means that, for example, you could have a different bank nominal codes for cheques, cash and credit cards.

These are the cases:

Case A: If 1 is set to true, then 2 and 3 must be false, 4 is set to true.
Case B: If 1 is set to true, then 2 and 3 must be false, 4 is set to false.

Case C: If 2 is true, then 1 and 3 must be false, 4 may be true.
Case D: If 2 is true, then 1 and 3 must be false, 4 may be false.

Case E: If 3 is true, then 1, 2 and 4 must be false.

Functionality

Case A

There are three ways this could be done:

If 1 is true and 4 is true, the invoice and the receipt must be posted to Sage.
This may be a receipt for the full amount of the invoice, or it may only be a deposit. If it is only a deposit (ie the balance > 0), the order status is changed to ‘Part Posted’.
This will be done using the ‘Post Invoice’ button in Orders or in Financials, or in ‘Post Invoices to Sage’.

We then need to post the remaining receipt amount to Sage after the receipt is entered against the order. This should be done in the receipts screen.

If we post a receipt to Sage at the same time as posting an invoice, the Sage sales ledger looks like this:

The sales receipt has been posted to the correct sales account and been allocated to the correct invoice.

There are two relevant fields on the receipts form, ‘Inv. Posted to Sage’ and ‘Receipt Posted to Sage’. T
he former field is set to true when the invoice is posted, the latter when the receipt is posted.

Case B

This will behave in the same way as a trade invoice. The retail invoice will get updated to Sage, regardless of receipts or balances being entered.

Case C

Both invoices and payments get updated to Sage for deposits. Only invoices get updated for balances when deliveries are created.
The balance payment gets updated when the receipt is entered in Receipts and the ‘Post to Sage’ button is pressed.

If there is no customer account in Sage, the system will create one.

The order status will not change to ‘Invoice Posted’ until the balance = 0.

Case D

Only invoices get updated to Sage for deposits and for balances when deliveries are created. Receipts do not get updated at all.

If there is no customer account in Sage, the system will create one.

Case E

No retail invoices are updated to Sage. All postings to Sage are done manually, either by individual order amount or by batches of receipt payments.