How stock and cash move
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Distributors is built for a business that sells goods from vans: the stock stays at a branch, distributors take part of it on the road, sell to shops and come back with cash, leftovers and the goods the shops returned. Every round follows the same four documents: an opening, distributions, expenses and a closing.
Branches and distributors
Saving a branch or a distributor creates everything it needs; renaming it renames those records too.
| Record | Creates on saving | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Branch | A Main and a Returns warehouse, an analytic account (plan Branches), a cash journal on a cash account of its own | Main holds the stock handed out; Returns receives leftovers and returns at closing; the cash journal receives the closing cash |
| Distributor | A Sale and a Returns warehouse, an analytic account (plan Distributors), a cash journal on a cash account of its own, a user | Sale holds what he carries; Returns what shops hand back; the cash journal's balance is the cash he holds |
The cash accounts are numbered from the defaults of Distributors settings. The journals and accounts are ordinary ones of Accounting, explained in Accounting: start here.
The round, step by step
| Step | Goods | Money |
|---|---|---|
| Opening, Confirm | Main warehouse of the branch to the distributor's Sale warehouse, one internal transfer | None |
| Distribution, Confirm | Sale warehouse to the customer; the customer's returns into the distributor's Returns warehouse | A draft invoice and a draft credit note |
| Distribution, Register Payment | None | Credit note and invoice posted and matched; the payment enters the distributor's cash journal |
| Expense, Approve and Register Payment | None | A vendor bill posted and paid, or an employee expense |
| Closing, Compute | None | Unpaid Direct distributions posted and paid from the distributor's cash journal |
| Closing, Receive | Leftovers and returns to the Returns warehouse of the branch | A payment out of the distributor's cash journal and one into the branch's, through the transit account |
The returned goods never go back into a Sale or a Main warehouse: from the Returns warehouse of the branch, Record Scrap writes off what cannot be sold.
Direct and deferred
The Payment Type of a distribution says when the shop pays. A Direct distribution is meant to be paid on delivery: when it is still unpaid at closing, Compute posts its invoice and records the payment from the distributor's cash journal on the closing date, as cash he should hold. A Deferred distribution stays open after the closing, and its invoice is collected later with Register Payment. The invoices and credit notes are ordinary customer documents (Customer invoices), and the cash journals ordinary cash journals (Banks, cash and currencies).
What a closing settles
A closing starts in Draft. Compute reads the opening and the confirmed distributions linked to it: what should remain per product, the customer returns, the total paid and the expenses of the round. Receive then records what is handed back, in as many sessions as needed:
- every product and return received and the cash recorded reaching Total Paid: the closing is Fully Received, and its opening Closed;
- anything less: Partially Received, and Receive stays available.
The amount the dialog proposes is Total Paid minus the Approved Expenses and minus what was already received. Because the full state asks for the whole Total Paid, a closing with approved expenses stays Partially Received after that amount is confirmed.
When goods are missing, step 2 of Receive offers Compensate Shortage: the missing goods are sold to the distributor himself at their sales price, on a distribution marked Shortage Compensation, confirmed and paid from his cash journal, so their value joins the cash he must hand in. The closing's Shortage Sales counter opens it. A Distributor Manager can Reset to Draft a closing: its transfers are reversed, its payments cancelled and its opening reopened.
Who may do what
| Access right on Distributors | Can |
|---|---|
| Distributor | Distribution and Expenses, for his own records only: record and confirm distributions, register their payment, print them, record and send expenses. He cannot change prices, taxes or the distributor. |
| Distributor Manager | Everything of every distributor of his companies, plus Opening, Closing and the configuration: Cancel & Reverse, Reset to Draft, approving any expense, setting passwords. |
A user with only the Distributor access right sees, in the other apps, only the invoices, bills and transfers of his own distributions, expenses and openings.
What the app does not do
- It does not put the analytic accounts it creates on invoice or bill lines.
- It has no printed report of its own: Print A4 and Print Roll print the invoices and credit notes.
- Its settings are shared by all companies of the database.
- It runs no scheduled job and sends no e-mail by itself; Distributors automations lists what it does when records are saved.
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