Basic Operations
Almost everything in this section is about items, because items are what every other part of BigLedger reads. A sales order, a purchase invoice, a stock count, a price rule and an e-Invoice line all point at an item record. Get those right and the rest behaves.
Read these in this order
The two things that explain the whole section
1. Every item has two records. The document item is the commercial definition — price, tax, e-Invoice classification, what a document line can pick. The inventory item is the stock-keeping record that ledgers, balances, serial numbers and costing layers hang off.
They are linked, and creating a Basic Item in Doc Item Maintenance creates and links both. An item created on the inventory side alone cannot go on any document.
2. Three fields on an item are locked. The item code (unless code editing is switched on), the item type and — for a Basic Item — the sub item type that decides how quantity is tracked. The last two cannot be changed on any edit screen; only a Doc Item import rewrites them, unchecked, so for a used product the repair is obsolete-and-replace. Which is why the first page in the list above is about deciding, not doing.
Where the rest of your master data lives
This section covers items. The other master data you will need is documented alongside the applet that owns it:
- Customers and suppliers — Customer Maintenance and the Supplier applet.
- Companies, branches and locations — the Organisation applet. Set this up before anything else; every other configuration hangs off it.
- Chart of accounts and default GL codes — chart of accounts setup.
- Tax codes — the Tax Configuration applet.
- Cashbooks and settlement methods — the Cashbook applet.
- Prices — pricing schemes and price books, under Daily tasks.
What success looks like
You are through this section when you can answer:
- Which applet do you create a new product in, and why that one? (Doc Item Maintenance — it creates and links both records.)
- Which three fields does the edit screen lock once an item is saved? (Item code, item type, sub item type.)
- What does it mean when an item’s FI Item Code is blank? (It has no document-item twin and cannot go on any document.)
Common mistakes
| What goes wrong | The fix |
|---|---|
| Creating items in the Inventory applet | Create them in Doc Item Maintenance |
| Choosing an item type in a hurry | The screens lock it once saved — decide first |
| Serialising everything “to be safe” | Every movement then needs serial entry |
| Leaving the e-Invoice classification blank | Set it at creation. There is no failure to wait for — the line is submitted as 022 Others |
| Leaving items uncategorised | Category-based price rules match nothing, silently |
| Deleting an item with history | Set it Inactive or Obsolete |