Selling, buying, stock and the books — connected, so confirming an order in one office moves the stock figure on someone else's screen without either of you refreshing anything.
Nothing is re-keyed between them. A product's cost is worked out by the warehouse and used by the accountant; a customer's balance is written by the ledger and read by the salesperson quoting them.
Track the whole conversation with a customer as one connected chain.
Three separate records, so the differences between them are visible.
Every movement is recorded permanently and nothing is ever edited away.
Set up once, used consistently everywhere.
Written as the business runs, not typed up afterwards.
The parts that make it feel like one system rather than six.
Ctrl+KFive steps. Each one produces a document with its own number, and each hands over to a different part of the team — which is exactly what stops one person being able to sell, ship and invoice unchecked.
Pick the customer and add products. Prices fill in from that customer's own price list, including any quantity break they qualify for — you can still type over it. Set a validity date and the quote expires on its own rather than lingering in the pipeline.
When the customer says yes, convert the quote. The lines are copied onto a new draft order, so editing it later never rewrites what you originally quoted. Check it, then press Confirm order — that is the moment the stock is reserved and the order gets its real number.
The warehouse opens the order and ships it. Stock leaves the shelf, the reservation is released, and the order moves to Completed — or Partially fulfilled if only some went out, with the rest still tracked. Sending part of an order is normal, not an exception.
By default this bills only what has actually shipped, which is what most customers expect and most contracts require. It arrives as a draft, so it can be checked before it becomes real.
Posting is the point of no return: the invoice gets its number, the accounting entry is written and the customer now owes you. Record the payment against it from Accounting › Payments and the invoice settles itself. One payment can clear several invoices at once — a customer sending a round figure is the normal case, not an edge case.
Confirming an order is not the same as shipping it. Confirming sets the goods aside so nobody else can promise them; they stay on your shelf and in your stock value until a delivery is shipped. That gap is deliberate — it is what lets sales commit to a date while the warehouse picks in its own time.
The mirror image, with one difference that matters: receiving goods is the only event in the whole system that changes what your stock is worth.
Choose the supplier, the warehouse it should arrive at, and what you want. If the supplier trades in euros, the order is in euros — the conversion for your books happens on its own, at the rate for that date. Confirm order commits you.
The warehouse opens the order when the lorry arrives. Stock goes up, and the average cost of that product is recalculated across everything you now hold. Receiving more than you ordered is refused — a supplier over-shipping is a conversation to have, not a silent adjustment.
When the supplier's invoice arrives, raise the bill against the order. By default it bills what you actually received, so any difference between what you ordered, what turned up and what they charged you is visible instead of buried. Record their own invoice number so it can be found later.
Posting records what you owe and when it falls due. Anything past its due date turns Overdue overnight and appears in the aged creditors report and on the dashboard, so it stops being something you have to remember.
Three numbers matter, and they are not the same thing.
| Figure | What it means | Who moves it |
|---|---|---|
| On hand | Physically on the shelf right now | Receipts, deliveries, transfers, counts |
| Reserved | Already promised to a confirmed order | Confirming and cancelling sales orders |
| Available | On hand less reserved — what you can still sell | Follows automatically from the other two |
Moving stock between warehouses. Raise a transfer under Inventory › Transfers, list what is going, and complete it. Stock leaves one warehouse and arrives at the other in a single action, so it is never briefly missing from both. Moving your own stock around does not change what it cost you.
When the shelf disagrees with the system. Record a stock count under Inventory › Adjustments. Enter what you actually counted; the difference is applied and the value of the gain or loss is posted to the accounts in the same step. The shelf is treated as the authority — if you counted zero, the system accepts zero.
Knowing before you run out. Set a reorder point on a product and it appears on the low-stock list and in the dashboard's attention panel as soon as availability crosses it. The purchasing team is notified once, when it crosses — not on every subsequent pick.
Cost is an average, and it only moves when you buy. Hold 100 units that cost 40 each, receive 100 more at 60, and every unit is now valued at 50 — not 60. Selling stock never changes what the remaining units cost. That is what makes a margin figure mean something.
You do not enter accounting entries for day-to-day trading. Posting an invoice or a bill writes them, correctly, in the background.
| Account | Why | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 · Accounts Receivable | The customer now owes you | 1,105.50 | — |
| 4000 · Sales Revenue | You earned it | — | 1,005.00 |
| 2200 · Sales Tax Payable | Tax collected on behalf of the authority | — | 100.50 |
| 5000 · Cost of Goods Sold | What those goods cost you | 402.00 | — |
| 1300 · Inventory | They are no longer on your balance sheet | — | 402.00 |
Reports, always current. Under Accounting › Reports you will find a trial balance, a profit and loss for any period, a balance sheet, and aged debtors and creditors broken into current, 31–60, 61–90 and 90-plus days. They read the ledger directly, so they are never waiting on a month-end process.
Mistakes are corrected, not erased. A posted entry is never edited or deleted. Reversing it posts the opposite entry and links the two together, so anyone looking later sees both what was recorded and what undid it. This is what makes the books defensible to an auditor.
Closing a year. Mark a financial year closed under Settings › Company and the system refuses any posting dated inside it. Nobody can quietly restate a period you have already reported on.
Posting cannot be undone. Before pressing Post invoice or Post bill, check the figures — the draft stage exists precisely so you can. Afterwards the only routes are a payment, a credit note, or a reversal that stays on the record.
Each person gets one role. A role that has no business in an area does not see a greyed-out version of it — the whole section is absent from their menu. Every action is checked again on the server, so the limits hold regardless of what anyone types into the address bar.
adminmanagersalesbuyerwarehouseaccountantviewerThe separations are the point. The person who commits to a customer is not the person who ships the goods, and neither is the person who commits the figures to the books. It is a little more clicking between colleagues, and it is the difference between records you can defend and records you merely have.
In order. Each step depends on the ones before it, so it is worth doing them in sequence on the first day.
Settings › Company — name, address and tax number appear on every document you send. Set your base currency here too: it is the currency all your reports are stated in, and it is not easily changed later.
Settings › Currencies & Tax — add a rate for any currency you buy or sell in. Rates are dated, so a document from March always keeps March's rate. Mark a tax rate as inclusive if your prices already contain it.
Inventory › Warehouses — one is enough to start. Mark one as the default and it will be pre-selected on new documents.
Master Data › Products — create your categories first, then products. Set a reorder point on anything you do not want to run out of. Note that you do not enter a cost price: the system works it out from what you actually pay.
Inventory › Adjustments — record what you already hold as a stock count with the reason set to Opening Balance. This brings the stock in and puts its value on your balance sheet in one step.
Master Data › Customers & Suppliers — set payment terms and, where you want them, credit limits. One record covers a company you both buy from and sell to.
Settings › Team — add each person and give them the role that matches their job. Start narrower than you think you need; widening access later is a two-second change.
Start on the dashboard. The Needs attention panel is ordered by urgency and links straight to the thing that needs doing — an invoice that has gone past due, an order that missed its promised date, a product about to run out. Working that panel to empty is a good definition of a finished day.
Use Ctrl+K instead of the menu. Type
part of an order number, a customer name or a product code from any screen and
go straight there. On a Mac it is ⌘+K.
Trust the badges. The numbers beside the menu items are live counts of things that are actually wrong — overdue invoices, low stock. They only ever appear when there is something to act on, so a menu with no badges genuinely means nothing needs you.
Leave things in draft. Drafts cost nothing and commit nothing. A half-finished order or an unchecked invoice is safe to leave overnight; it takes no number, holds no stock and touches no accounts until somebody confirms or posts it.
You do not need to refresh. If a colleague confirms an order or ships a delivery, your screen updates on its own. The small Live indicator in the corner tells you the connection is healthy — if it ever reads Offline, what you are looking at may be stale.
The demonstration system is loaded with roughly four months of trading. Sign in as different people to see how much the system changes shape around the job — the menu itself is different for each one.
adminSees and does everythingmanagerApproves, cannot administersalesNo accounting menu at allbuyerPurchasing and productswarehouseMoves stock, no ledgeraccountantThe full ledgerviewerRead-only throughoutsales2A second salesperson
All demonstration accounts share the password erp12345. These exist
for the demonstration system only and are removed before go-live.