Use Cases

These are the shapes the module is actually configured in, and for each one: who does the job, when, and how they know it went right. The examples use the wiki’s running example business, GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd — a Malaysian multi-branch consumer-electronics retailer with three companies and 22 branches across Klang Valley, Penang, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, buying from authorised distributors and accessory wholesalers, some of them in USD. After the nine shapes come the four things they share: where their numbers come from, what goes wrong, what none of them will do for you, and the monthly check.

1. Head office buys, the branch receives, head office pays

The shape. Buying is centralised. A buyer at head office raises a purchase order for 200 units of a wireless earbud model at RM 128, delivered to GS-KV-01; the branch counts the delivery and raises the receipt; accounts payable at head office knocks the receipt off into the supplier’s invoice and pays it at month end. Roughly 2,100 supplier invoices a month come through this flow.

    flowchart LR
  PO["Purchase Order<br/>head office · FINAL<br/><b>moves nothing</b>"] -->|"KO For"| GRN["Purchase GRN<br/>GS-KV-01 counts 180 of 200<br/><b>moves nothing</b>"]
  GRN -->|"KO For"| PI["Purchase Invoice<br/>head office · FINAL<br/><b>stock +180, Cr Creditor</b>"]
  PI -->|"contra"| PV["Payment Voucher<br/>one line per bank transfer"]
  PO -. "20 stay in the queue<br/>for the next delivery" .-> PO
  

What to know:

• The GRN is a count, not a stock movement. Between the delivery and the invoice the goods are on the shelf and absent from the ledger; Stock Availability shows them as GRN quantity.
• Receive only what you will pay for. Ten damaged units left out of the GRN stay in the order’s open queue; the supplier’s replacement is a second GRN against the same order.
• The price check happens on the invoice, by a person. Knock-off brings the order’s RM 128 onto the invoice; if the supplier billed RM 132, that is the moment to stop.
• A debit note afterwards fixes what you owe, not what the stock cost. Finalise at RM 132 and claim the RM 4 back on a Purchase Debit Note, and you owe less — but the debit note moves no stock, so the earbuds’ moving average keeps the RM 132 they came in at. The average is corrected only by a Reset MA, at company level. That is why the comparison belongs before FINAL.
• CLOSE the order when the supplier says the balance is not coming; otherwise the 20 units sit in the Purchase Order Queue forever.

Behind the scene. FINAL on the invoice queues the work rather than doing it in front of you: the stock line, the journal and the cost follow as jobs, and the moving average they compute is written back onto the invoice line afterwards. An invoice whose costing is still empty right after FINAL has not finished, rather than gone wrong.

Whose job, and how they know. The branch receiver counts and keys the GRN the day the goods arrive. The AP clerk compares quantity and price against the order before pressing FINAL. The buyer reads the Purchase Order Queue weekly and closes what is not coming. They know it went right when every invoice line was knocked off a receipt, and nothing older than the supplier’s lead time sits in the queue without a reason the buyer can give.

Walkthrough: Standard Procurement Workflow.

What one supplier bill sets off after FINAL

Follow one bill from this shape. Head office ordered 200 wireless earbuds at RM 128 for GS-KV-01, the branch counted 180 on a plain GRN, and the AP clerk knocks that GRN off into the supplier’s invoice and presses FINAL.

FINAL changes the status and queues the work; it does not do the work in front of you. The jobs that follow write into other modules:

1. Inventory. 180 earbuds go into stock. The invoice moves them, because the plain GRN before it carries a zero quantity.
2. Cost, flowing back onto the line. The costing job adds the line’s amount to the item’s running value, works out the new moving average, and writes it back onto the invoice line. The same job records RM 128 as the item’s last purchase cost, a figure only a standard Purchase Invoice writes.
3. The general ledger. Purchases and input tax are debited, and the supplier is credited on the account its AR/AP type picks.
4. What you owe. The invoice now carries an open balance of its full amount. The Creditor Report reads that balance, and the Payment Voucher’s contra brings it to nil.
5. Stock Availability. The 180 leave GRN quantity, which counts plain GRNs not yet on an invoice.
6. e-Invoice, only if the invoice is self-billed. MY E-Invoice Portal picks it up after FINAL.

Two things stay where they were. The 20 undelivered earbuds wait in the order’s open queue until a second GRN arrives or the buyer closes the order. Cost of sales is not posted at all: it is worked out at month end.

Why it is built as a queue. Each follow-on job is a separate subscription on your tenant, and each decides for itself whether a document gives it anything to do. That is what lets one FINAL reach stock, cost, the ledger, payables and e-Invoice, and lets a new subsystem arrive as a new job rather than a change to FINAL. The price is that FINAL can succeed while a job behind it fails. A bill whose costing is still empty a moment after FINAL is unfinished, not wrong. A bill that never gets its journal stays FINAL anyway, and nobody is told — the checks below are how you find out. The full list of jobs, and the ones that find nothing to do on a purchase invoice, is on the Purchase Invoice page under What FINAL actually sets off.

How you know the first bill worked

Thirty seconds, on the first supplier bill you finalise at GS-KV-01:

1. The invoice’s Posting tab. Journal posted, and on the standard pair Inventory posted. If the journal is still missing a minute later, open Trace Document: a failed posting leaves the invoice FINAL and tells nobody.
2. The line’s Costing Details sub-tab. An average cost and a Last Purchase Price are both filled in. A large gap between them that no price change explains points at a zero-value line or a debit note that never reached the cost.
3. The Creditor Report Outstanding Document Report. The invoice is listed under the supplier for its full amount.
4. The Purchase Order Queue. Only the undelivered balance of the order is left.

At month end the same idea runs for a whole company: no FINAL purchase document without a journal, the creditor reports tied to the trial balance, every payment in the cashbook. That is the Related Applets checklist, about fifteen minutes per company.

2. Keeping 22 branches stocked without a buyer watching each one

The shape. Minimum and maximum levels are set per accessory per location. A replenishment run compares each branch’s balance against its levels and raises the purchase orders itself.

Where the shortfall comes from. For each item at each branch, the run takes the level and subtracts the branch’s ledger quantity as it stands when the run executes, and stores the result on the run’s lines — a snapshot, not a live figure. Two consequences follow:

• Goods counted on a plain GRN and not yet invoiced are not in the ledger quantity, so a run in that gap still sees the branch as short. Open purchase orders are recorded on the run’s lines but not subtracted from what it orders. The guard is the strategy’s Block existing open PO (on by default): a line is held back while any order to the same supplier carries the item and is DRAFT, FINAL or EDITED. It reads the order’s status, not its open quantity, so an order already received or closed still holds the line back. Switch it off and the run can order twice.
• An order the run creates as FINAL has not been through the Purchase Order applet’s own finalise, which is what starts the follow-on jobs. Leave Document Status at Draft and finalise there.

Watch for: a new branch with no levels is invisible to the run — a missing level reads as zero, so nothing is ordered. Add the levels in the same checklist as opening the location.

Whose job, and how they know. The stock controller sets the levels when a branch opens and reviews them each season. The buyer reads each run’s drafts before finalising: they know it is right when every BLOCKED line has a reason they recognise and no order carries a unit price of 0 — the price comes from the item’s supplier link, and an item without one is ordered at 0.

3. Stock on the shelf before the bill arrives

The shape. A flagship smartphone launches on Friday; the distributor delivers Thursday and bills next week. The branch needs the units in stock and sellable the moment they land.

This is what the second receiving pair is for. Receive on Purchase GRN Stock In: the units enter stock at GS-KV-01 immediately and BigLedger posts Dr Inventory Not Invoiced / Cr Creditor Not Invoiced — the goods-received-not-invoiced accrual. When the bill comes, book it on Purchase Invoice No Stock In knocked off from that receipt: it posts the purchase and the creditor, and reverses the accrual.

What to know:

• Map INVENTORY_NOT_INVOICED and CREDITOR_NOT_INVOICED before the first receipt. Without them the GRN Stock In goes FINAL with the stock posted and no journal — except when only Inventory Not Invoiced is missing and the receipt carries tax: then a short journal posts, with the goods lines left out.
• Knock the invoice off the receipt, not off the order. The No Stock In invoice reverses the accrual whenever it carries any knock-off link, whatever the source; knocked off a purchase order, it reverses an accrual nobody raised.
• Capture tax on one document of the pair, not both — the invoice reverses the accrual including tax, the receipt accrued net.
• The company can auto-create the No Stock In invoice from a finalised GRN Stock In through the document-flow configuration, as a draft or straight to FINAL.
• This pair writes no last purchase cost. Only the standard Purchase Invoice writes it, so in this pair the Last Purchase Price column goes stale while the moving average stays current.
• This is a company-wide choice. Do not run this pair for launches and the standard pair for everything else — a buyer who knocks a GRN Stock In off into a full Purchase Invoice has just counted the launch stock twice.

Whose job, and how they know. The accountant maps the two accounts before the first receipt and decides, once, which pair the company runs. The AP clerk links every bill to its receipt. At month end the accountant reads the GRN Stock Ins not yet invoiced in the Creditor Report’s Outstanding Document Report and asks the buyer about every one older than the supplier’s billing cycle.

4. No order — and no goods

Two shapes that skip the chain, both legitimate.

Goods arrived with no purchase order. A walk-in accessory wholesaler, an urgent replacement, a delivery the buyer forgot to raise. Receive on a plain GRN keyed from scratch, write who agreed it into the remarks, and invoice from the GRN. The receipt still queues itself for the invoice; only the order step is missing. Walkthrough: Direct GRN Workflow.

Nothing to receive at all. Rent for GS-KV-03, the group’s cloud subscription, the auditors' fee. Key a Purchase Invoice (Internal) with a non-stock item whose GL code is the expense account; the money posts, no stock moves because the item resolves to no inventory item. Or pay it straight from a Payment Voucher with expense lines, if it is paid on the spot. Walkthrough: Direct Invoice Workflow.

The item decides whether stock moves, not your intention: a line whose item is linked to an inventory item books stock even on a bill you meant as an expense.

Whose job, and how they know. With no order, the invoice is the first time anybody checks the price, so the person who agreed the purchase signs the GRN’s remarks and the AP clerk checks the bill against them. For expense bills, the accountant reads the month’s expense accounts in Ledger and Journal and expects every rent, subscription and fee there — and none of it in stock.

5. An import paid in advance

The shape. GadgetSphere Distribution buys 500 ultraportable laptops from a Singapore distributor at USD 620, 30% on order and the balance on delivery. The invoice — or a pro-forma — arrives weeks before the container.

There is no prepayment document in BigLedger. The shape that works is: raise the order in USD, pay the deposit on a Payment Voucher with no contra — Dr Creditor / Cr Bank, which leaves the deposit as a debit on the supplier’s account — receive on the GRN when the goods land, knock the GRN off into the invoice, and contra the deposit voucher against it on the invoice’s Contra tab. The foreign-currency documents are finalised as base-currency shadows that carry the posting, and the settlement difference lands in FOREX_GAIN / FOREX_LOSS.

Do not key the supplier’s invoice when it arrives if the goods have not: the standard Purchase Invoice books stock at FINAL, and you would be selling from a ledger balance that is still at sea. And do not record the deposit on the purchase order’s Payment tab: the order moves no money, so the deposit reaches neither the cashbook nor the supplier’s balance.

Freight or duty billed later — on its own bill with a non-stock line, or on a Purchase Credit Note — reaches your books through the account its line posts to, not the laptops’ moving average: neither moves stock. BigLedger also keeps a separate landed-cost figure beside the average; how a bill’s freight is allocated into it is not covered here.

Whose job, and how they know. The AP clerk pays the deposit with the order number in the voucher’s reference and contras it the day the invoice is booked. The supplier’s Statement of Account in the Creditor Report shows the invoice, both vouchers and the contra, and a balance of zero, once the balance is paid. Walkthrough: Invoice-First Workflow.

6. Sending things back, and getting money back

Four documents, and the choice depends on whether goods move and which way the money goes.

The note names are the trap: in this platform the debit note lowers what you owe and the credit note raises it. A Purchase Return can still be voided after it is linked to an invoice (unless a later document was raised from the return), but an invoice with a return against it cannot be voided until the return is.

The two notes move money only. Neither touches the item’s cost, so a large overcharge corrected on a debit note leaves the stock valued at the old price until you reset the average.

Whose job, and how they know. The branch keys the return the day the goods leave, not when the supplier’s credit arrives, so the stock is right in between. The AP clerk contras the return against the supplier’s next invoice and checks the supplier’s statement shows no return left open.

7. Consignment from a brand principal

The shape. A brand principal places 300 units of a new wireless audio range at eight Klang Valley branches and still owns them until they sell. Monthly, they bill GadgetSphere for what sold.

    flowchart LR
  CPO["Consignment Purchase Order"] -->|"KO For"| CGRN["Consignment GRN<br/>stock +300 at each branch<br/>Dr Consignment Stock / Cr Consignment Liability"]
  CGRN -->|"units sell on cash bills<br/>stock −1 each"| SOLD(["214 sold in March"])
  SOLD --> CBILL["Consignment Billing<br/>knock off the GRN lines · 214 units<br/>Dr Purchase / Cr Creditor<br/>Dr Consignment Liability / Cr Consignment Stock"]
  CGRN -->|"range discontinued"| CRET["Consignment Return<br/>86 units' value reversed<br/>stock unchanged"]
  CBILL --> PV["Payment Voucher"]
  

What to know:

• Tick Consignment Item on the items first, or they do not appear in the consignment GRN’s search.
• Agree the price before keying the GRN. A consignment GRN at RM 0 enters the moving-average cost pool at zero and drags the average down for everything in stock.
• The units sell on ordinary cash bills and sales invoices — they are in the branch’s stock balance like anything else. What makes them consignment is the journal, not the location.
• Consignment Billing is the consignor’s bill to you. Its applet is filed in the sales folder and named as if it billed a customer; it is a purchase invoice. Billing part of a GRN clears only that part of the holding.
• The Consignment Return reverses value only. If the physical units go back, record the movement with a Consignment GIN or a stock adjustment as your process decides.

Whose job, and how they know. Each month the principal sends a statement of what sold. Before keying the billing, the category buyer compares it with the units the eight branches actually sold and settles any difference with the principal. After the billing, the consignment holding left on the GRNs should equal the units still on the shelves.

Walkthrough: Consignment Purchasing.

8. Giving a supplier a window

The shape. A large accessory wholesaler wants to see GadgetSphere’s orders on them, confirm each one, and raise the delivery order themselves instead of e-mailing PDFs.

Link their user to the supplier record on the Supplier applet’s Supplier Login tab and grant the supplier-access applets. Through Purchase Order Supplier Access they read every FINAL order raised on them, advance its workflow status, export the PDF and run a PO-versus-GRN report; through Supplier Delivery Order they raise delivery orders on the tenant. The GRN, Invoice, Credit Note and Return Supplier Access applets show them the receipts, invoices, credit notes and returns you have raised against them, read-only.

Watch for: the order portal lists FINAL orders only, and its search has no field that shows drafts, so finalise an order before you expect the supplier to act on it. The delivery order the supplier raises is the tenant’s ordinary outbound delivery order — it moves no stock and is not a purchase document. Your receiving is still the GRN.

Whose job, and how they know. Whoever links a supplier’s user also unlinks it: when the supplier’s staff change or the relationship ends, the Supplier Login tab is part of that checklist. The buyer knows the window works when the supplier confirms an order without being sent its PDF.

9. Buying inside the group

The shape. GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd buys wholesale stock from GadgetSphere Distribution Sdn Bhd — two companies in the same tenant.

Intercompany processing raises the other half of a document in the counterpart company, according to the intercompany rows of the branch where the source document is finalised. A Purchase Order in the buyer pairs with a Sales Order in the seller, in either direction. The seller’s sales invoice becomes a Purchase Invoice in the buyer — or a GRN, if the buyer receives before it is billed — and the seller’s outbound delivery order becomes a GRN. A sales return, credit note or debit note becomes its purchase counterpart, a purchase return becomes a sales return, and a payment voucher becomes a receipt voucher. A row set to AUTO creates the mirror as its source finalises; a row set to MANUAL puts it in a queue — the Purchase Order applet’s Intercompany menu is that confirmation queue for orders, where unprocessed rows wait for Confirm Intercompany Transaction and processed rows are the audit trail. Either way the mirror arrives as a draft unless the row is set to finalise it. A mirror GRN carries the usual 0 / 0 signums — the buying company’s stock still arrives on its purchase invoice. A group with one finance team usually wants AUTO; one where each company has its own accountant wants MANUAL.

Whose job, and how they know. The group accountant keeps the intercompany rows in step with how the companies actually trade, and a clerk in the buying company finalises (or confirms) what arrives. At month end each company’s balance with the other should net to zero; a gap is a document that was mirrored and never finalised, or never mirrored at all.

What every one of these has in common

None of them is matched by an engine and none of them is gated by an approval. The chain records what was ordered, received and billed, and the person booking the invoice compares the numbers before FINAL. Whoever holds the finalise permission on the invoice is the control. See Core concepts §4 and §5.

They also lean on the same few things outside Purchasing:

• What must exist first. A Knock Off Configuration row for every pair of documents a shape chains — without it the KO For picker is empty — and the company’s default GL codes for every account the shape posts to (Configuration sets them up in order).
• What breaks elsewhere when a record is wrong. A supplier carrying a receivable type posts its bills to debtors, and the creditor reports leave it out. An item that is not a stock item — a service, or an alias that points at no inventory item — books no stock on any of these shapes (a basic item with no link is linked for you the first time it posts). Both are silent until someone reconciles.
• What a FINAL purchase invoice lets you do next. Pay it, contra a deposit or a return against it, correct it with a note, and — when it is self-billed — send it to MyInvois.
• What it is used alongside. Stock Availability for what is on its way, the Creditor Report for what is owed, and Costing Internals when an item’s cost moves.

Where the numbers in these shapes come from

Every figure these shapes leave behind is either stored when a job runs or worked out when you look, and the difference decides when it can be wrong.

For the same table across every module that Purchasing writes into, see Related Applets.

When one of these shapes goes wrong

A purchase that went to the wrong account, or posted no journal at all, is a configuration question rather than a shape question: Related Applets has those symptoms.

What none of these shapes will do for you

Each limit below holds in every shape on this page. After each one, the person who does the job instead.

• Nothing compares the order, the receipt and the bill for you. The AP clerk does it, on the invoice, before FINAL — the one moment the difference is still free to fix.
• A debit or credit note does not change what stock cost. It changes what you owe. The stock controller reads the item’s average after a large correction and resets it if needed.
• Approval does not hold a receipt, an invoice or a payment. It covers orders and requisitions only. The finance manager decides who holds the finalise permission on each document.
• A replenishment run does not see goods received but not invoiced, and does not raise orders for a location without levels. The buyer reads every run’s drafts before finalising them; the stock controller sets levels when a location opens.
• The supplier’s purchase limit is a record, not a rule. Nothing refuses an order above it. The finance manager reads supplier exposure in the Creditor Report.
• A mirror in the other company does not finalise itself unless its row says so. A clerk in the receiving company finalises or confirms it, and the group accountant checks the two companies' balances net each month.

How you know a month of buying went right

About twenty minutes on the last working day, per company. Each step can fail, and each names the shape it checks.

1. Nothing open that should not be (shapes 1, 2). In the Purchase Order applet’s queue, every line older than its supplier’s lead time has a reason. You are done when the buyer can give one for each, or has closed it.
2. Every receipt is on its way to a bill (shapes 1, 3, 4). Standard pair: Stock Availability’s GRN quantity for your top items. Stock In pair: the Creditor Report’s Outstanding Document Report, GRN Stock In only. You are done when every receipt older than the supplier’s billing cycle has a reason.
3. No deposit is left floating (shape 5). In the Creditor Report, each supplier with a payment voucher still open has a matching order still waiting for goods. You are done when every open voucher has one.
4. The averages are believable (shapes 1, 6, 7). For the month’s most-bought items, open a recent purchase invoice line’s Costing Details and compare the average cost with Last Purchase Price. You are done when every large gap is explained by a price change you know about — not by a zero-value line, a RM 0 consignment GRN or a debit note that never reached the cost.
5. The group nets (shape 9). Each company’s balance with each other company agrees with the other side. You are done when the difference is zero.

The ledger side of the same close — no FINAL document without a journal, the creditor reports tied to the trial balance, every payment in the cashbook — is the Related Applets checklist.

Where to go next