Non Stock and Trade In Applet

The register of units that sit outside the inventory ledger: trade-in units taken from customers at the till, and non-stock items you still want to track one serial at a time, each with a running balance per location. Most records are not typed in here — they are created when a document with a trade-in line is finalised and reduced again when the unit is sold — and a unit typed in by hand without a serial number can never be matched by a document. Manual transaction lines are a record only; they never move the balance.

Your job, and the screen for it

Overview

The Non Stock and Trade In applet (NSTI) is the register of items that sit outside the normal inventory ledger: trade-in units taken from customers (a used phone accepted against a new one at the POS) and non-stock items you still want to track one unit at a time. Each record in the listing is one unit — one serial number at one location — with its purchase and sale prices, category, GL code and a running quantity balance. The applet also maintains the NSTI categories and offers a CSV import.

It is opened by the store or inventory team that receives and resells trade-ins, and by finance for the GL side. Most NSTI records are not typed in here: they are created by BigLedger when a POS cash bill or sales document with a trade-in line is finalised, and they are reduced again when the unit is sold. This applet is where you look them up, correct their values and details (though not their Financial Item, which the edit panel never saves), finalise them and attach documents.

Where it fits

Modules: Inventory, Sales, Financial Accounting.

Screens and menus

Left menu:

Gear (Settings) menu: System Configuration › Field Settings, Default Selection; the shared frame adds Server Side Permissions (Permission Wizard, Permission Set, User Permission, Role Permission), Integration › Triggers (webhooks) and Developer Tools. Feature Visibility exists but has no menu entry. Personalization lists Field Settings (the link does nothing) and Default Selection.

NSTI Stock listing

Columns: NSTI Code, NSTI Name, Type (TRADE_IN / NON_STOCK), Serial Number, Category, Branch, Location, Amount (purchase price incl. tax), Stock Balance, Posting Status (DRAFT / FINAL), Status, Created Date (the purchase date), Updated Date. Keyword search plus column filters. + opens the create panel; clicking a row opens the edit panel.

Create panel

One Details tab (see Fields). Pressing + first creates a temporary record so that the unit already has an identity; SAVE then makes it active. A SCAN button next to Serial Number opens the camera barcode reader.

Edit panel

Tabs Details, Txn Line, Attachment (or three stacked panels when Vertical Orientation is on). Header buttons SAVE and FINAL; a Delete button below the tabs (two clicks — the first arms it, the second sends the delete). Delete is not covered by the FINAL lock: it shows on a FINAL unit that is still in stock, and removing that unit takes it out of the balance lookup and Stock Availability with no journal behind it. The only control is STOCK_HIDE_DELETE_BUTTON; switch it on where units carry real value.

• Details — the create fields, plus read-only Purchase Date, Purchase Price, Sales Date, Sales Price (filled from documents) and editable Current Value and Current For Sale Price. Financial Item can be re-picked here, but SAVE and FINAL do not send the new choice, so the unit keeps the item it was created with.
• Txn Line — the unit’s transaction history: Txn Doc No, Txn Date, Doc Short Code, Txn Type (ACQUISITION / DISPOSAL / ADJUSTMENT), Qty, Unit Price, SST/VAT/GST, WHT, Txn Amount; filter by keyword and document type. Add Transaction creates a manual line; lines that came from a document are read-only.
• Attachment — files attached to the unit: Attachment Name, Details, file.

NSTI Category

Listing: Category Code, Category Name, Creation Date, Updated Date, Status. Create: Code, Name, Description, Status. Edit adds Delete (two-click). There is no parent category — the list is flat.

Import NSTI

Listing: File Name, File Size, Format, Status, Process Status (PROCESSING / DONE / FAILED), User Error Message, Created Date, Updated Date, Created by. Create: drag-and-drop or Upload File, ADD, and a Sample Format link that downloads MasterData_Upload_Nsti_Stock.csv. Opening a row shows the parsed staging rows (Code, Name, Type, Category Code …) and a Delete.

Configuration

Before you can use it

• A doc item of transaction type NSTI in Doc Item Maintenance. The Financial Item picker on the NSTI record lists every ACTIVE doc item, but documents only act on lines whose item is of type NSTI. Pick a non-NSTI item and documents never move the unit.
• Company, branch and location in Organisation — all three are mandatory on the record, and each must be a real one.
• Company default GL code NSTI in Chart of Account › Companies › Default GL Codes — optional, but set it deliberately for every company. If a company has no NSTI link when a document creates or updates a unit, BigLedger first looks for any GL code whose code is Trade-In — in any chart of accounts, belonging to any company — and links that one; only if there is none does it create a GL code named “Non-Stock and Trade-In” and link it. That search never finds the code it creates, so in a group each company without a link gets a new one, or all of them end up on another company’s Trade-In account. COGS_NSTI and STOCK_BALANCE_NSTI are needed only for the month-end closing-stock journal.
• Background runs. Documents create NSTI transaction lines, and those lines move unit balances, only if the two NSTI runs are subscribed to the document-finalise chain on your tenant. Neither is an applet setting; ask support when FINAL documents leave no trace here.
• Server-side permissions — TNT_API_NON_STOCK_TRADE_IN_HDR_{CREATE,READ,UPDATE,DELETE} (or _OWNER / _ADMIN), the same set with _TXN_LINE_, _CATEGORY_, _ATTACHMENT_ and for the import files.

Applet settings

Settings are applet-local: Field Settings is this applet’s own screen (four panels: Stock Settings, Category Settings, Import File Settings, Vertical UI Setting), not the shared document-applet one. Every control starts unset, so all hides are off, records lock at FINAL and the layout is horizontal until someone saves the screen. Anyone with access to the Settings menu can change them; they apply tenant-wide.

Those 27 keys are declared, rendered, saved and read. Also on the screen or in the model, but short of it:

• The hide company listing switch — rendered and saved, but the listing has no Company column and nothing reads the key.
• The API upload switch — declared and saved but has no toggle here and no reader.
• Read without a control: STOCK_HIDE_TYPE, STOCK_HIDE_BRANCH, STOCK_HIDE_SN, STOCK_HIDE_AMOUNT, STOCK_HIDE_PURCHASE_DATE, STOCK_HIDE_UPDATED_DATE (listing columns Type, Branch, Serial Number, Amount, Created Date, Updated Date) and DEFAULT_TOGGLE_COLUMN / DEFAULT_ORIENTATION. They can be set only by support writing the applet’s settings directly.
• Default Selection (Default Branch, Default Location): the screen is not wired up, so choosing a value throws an error; nothing in this applet reads DEFAULT_BRANCH / DEFAULT_LOCATION. Personalization › Default Selection is the same screen. PRINTABLE is declared only.

Document behaviour settings

Not applicable in the document sense — this is master data with its own posting status. What FINAL does is described under Lifecycle and effects: it is a field that the applet’s own buttons honour; BigLedger does not post anything on it.

Settings in other applets that control this applet

Feature visibility / permissions

• Client-side permissions: none are defined for this applet, and the applet checks no SHOW_* codes. Feature Visibility is the shared Manage Team Access screen only; the HIDE_* settings cannot be reopened per role.
• Server-side permissions: the Permission Set / User / Role routes are the shared containers; each NSTI screen checks its own TNT_API_NON_STOCK_TRADE_IN_* code with the tenant owner / admin roles as fallback. The POS till’s trade-in list is served by this applet’s read permission too: a cashier role without it sees an empty trade-in list at the counter, with no error, as if no units existed — grant the read code to every cashier role that takes trade-ins.

Fields

NSTI Stock — Details

NSTI Name (mandatory, up to 255 characters) is free text; a unit created by a document takes the document line’s item name. The unit also has a Description field (optional, up to 255), but neither panel shows it: the create form sends it empty and the edit panel has no box for it, and the import file has no column for it. The rows below are the fields that do something you cannot see from the form.

Txn Line — Add Transaction

A manual line is stored against the unit with no document; BigLedger validates that anything it references exists and does not change the unit’s Stock Balance — only the balance run does that, and it runs for document-generated lines only (see below).

Attachment

Attachment Name, Details, one file.

NSTI Category

Category Name (mandatory) is what the unit form’s Category picker shows after the code; Description (optional) stays on the category’s own form and appears in no listing.

Import NSTI — CSV columns

CODE, NAME, TYPE, FINANCIAL_ITEM_CODE, CATEGORY_CODE, COMPANY_CODE, BRANCH_CODE, LOCATION_CODE, EMPLOYEE_NAME, CURRENCY, GL_CODE, WARRANTY_EXPIRY, SERIAL_NUMBER, PURCHASE_DATE, PURCHASE_PRICE_INCL_TAX, SALES_DATE, SALES_PRICE_INCL_TAX, CURRENT_VALUE_INCL_TAX, CURRENT_FOR_SALES_PRICE_INCL_TAX. The first row is the header and its names are what the import reads: the columns may be in any order, and a header missing any of the nineteen fails the whole file with a message naming the missing ones (builds before 2026-10-05 read by position and ignored the names). Values are trimmed; UTF-8 with or without BOM. Dates must look like 2026-03-14 10:30:00.000 +0800; a date or a number that does not parse fails its row, with the reason written on the row for the Checking tab — it is no longer stored empty.

Lifecycle and effects

This is a master-data applet with its own register — no server document type, no amount or quantity sign of its own, no journal from this applet, no open-queue rows. The posting status on a unit is set by the applet’s FINAL / SAVE buttons through an ordinary update; BigLedger validates the record and stores it — it posts nothing and does not lock anything on the server. The lock is enforced only by the applet’s buttons and reopened by ALLOW_EDIT_TXN_LINE_AFTER_FINAL.

What the applet writes

How documents create and move units (the real lifecycle)

1. A generic document is finalised. The finalise chain fans out to the tenant’s subscribed runs; the NSTI transaction-line run picks the document up. It does nothing when the document has already been processed for trade-in, or when the document is in a foreign currency.
2. For every stock line with a non-zero quantity whose item is of type NSTI and which carries serial numbers, it writes one transaction line per serial with quantity 1, the document’s quantity sign (forced to +1 for a Sales Credit Note) and the line’s amounts, prices and taxes; the transaction type is ACQUISITION for +1, DISPOSAL for −1, ADJUSTMENT for 0. On a Stock Adjustment the quantity is instead +1 or −1 with the direction of the line, and that sets the type. Lines without serial numbers create nothing. Stock-in-transit counter-lines are added for transfer-type documents.
3. Each new line is handed to the balance run: the unit is looked up by item + serial number + location (all three mandatory). If it exists, its Stock Balance moves by the line quantity in the sign’s direction and an invalid GL link is repaired; if not, a unit is created with type TRADE_IN, posting status FINAL, a code from the running number, the line’s item name, currency, company / branch / location, purchase date and price (line amount ÷ quantity), the serial, a balance of 1, and the company NSTI GL code (filled in if missing — see Before you can use it) plus subledger. The balance is 1 whatever the line’s sign: a disposal line for a serial that has no unit at that location creates one at +1 instead of failing. A Stock Adjustment is the exception: a minus adjustment of such a serial creates the unit at −1. That happens when the sale skipped the stock check, which ignores a line with neither a delivery location nor a store, while the transaction line falls back to the header’s store or the branch’s default location. Give every sales line of an NSTI item its location.
4. Support can re-run steps 1-3 for one sale or receipt through a developer endpoint. It skips anything already marked as processed for trade-in, so it repairs only what the first run never touched (see Troubleshooting).

Signs of the trade-in document types: Purchase Trade In — quantity +1, amount −1 (the POS trade-in line: the unit comes in, the customer’s bill goes down); Sales Trade In — quantity −1, amount +1. A normal sales line (Cash Bill, Sales Invoice, quantity −1) on an NSTI serial disposes of the unit; a sales credit note brings it back.

Journal. NSTI lines are posted by the document’s own posting, not by this applet: a stock line whose item is NSTI (or whose document type is either trade-in type) posts under transaction code NSTI, and the GL is resolved as line GL → header GL → the item’s company link with code NSTI → company default NSTI. Month end: the closing-stock run posts the NSTI closing-stock value between COGS_NSTI and STOCK_BALANCE_NSTI.

Stock check on sale. When BigLedger validates stock for a document, every NSTI serial on a line must have a balance of at least 1 at the line’s location (delivery location, else the line’s store), otherwise the document is rejected with “There’s not enough stock for NSTI item <code>, serial number <sn>”. A line with neither a delivery location nor a store is skipped by this check.

Server-side validation that stops a save: on a unit, the company, branch, location, category, GL code, subledger, item and any linked purchase / sales document must exist if set, and the audit fields must be present. Transaction lines and categories are checked the same way. There is no uniqueness check on unit code, serial number or category code.

What it only reads. Stock Availability shows NSTI units (grouped by company, location and item; the cost it shows is the group’s total purchase price incl. tax divided by the group’s total balance, and units already sold stay in that total at balance 0, so once some units of a group are sold and some remain, the figure is higher than the price paid for the units still on hand) alongside inventory balances for items of type NSTI. The historical stock balance report does not include NSTI units.

Related applets

• Doc Item Maintenance — creates the NSTI-type items that the record’s Financial Item should point at; only those are recognised when documents are finalised.
• POS General — trade-in lines on a cash bill are the main way TRADE_IN units are created; selling the unit later disposes of it.
• Sales Invoice, Sales Credit Note — dispose of and restore NSTI serials; the credit note’s quantity sign is forced to +1 for NSTI lines.
• Stock Availability — the only stock report that shows NSTI balances; Stock Balance and Stock Report show inventory only.
• Chart of Account — company default GL codes NSTI, COGS_NSTI, STOCK_BALANCE_NSTI and the closing-stock record’s NSTI value; Financial Report — where the month-end NSTI closing journal lands.
• Organisation — company, branch and location; the location is part of the unit’s identity.
• Tax Configuration — tax and WHT codes on manual transaction lines.
• Employee Maintenance — the optional person in charge on a unit.

Troubleshooting

Related documentation

• Inventory Workflow applets
• Doc Item Maintenance — where the NSTI item type is set
• POS General — trade-in lines at the till
• Inventory module