Four records, and the order they come in — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if a new GadgetSphere company has landed on your desk and you are about to open the Organisation applet and start typing. Read it before you type, because almost every step in this course is a prerequisite for a step further down, and the failures that follow from getting the order wrong are the unexplained kind. Ten minutes, nothing to configure yet.

Step 1 — Name the four records you are about to create

A tenant is the whole BigLedger account. Inside it, a company is a legal entity: the one that files accounts, carries a tax registration, holds a chart of accounts and owns a ledger. A branch is an operating unit of that company — a shop, a warehouse, an online channel. A location is the physical place stock actually sits. Every document, every stock movement and every report line is tagged with all three, and every ledger, report and stock query is filtered by them. They are also the only three things a permission can be narrowed to, so who may see what is drawn along the same lines. They are created in that order — company, then branch, then location — or the branch creates its location as it is saved.

Reference: Organization — Overview

Step 2 — Check that you can start at all

After this step you will know whether the work is yours to do or somebody else’s. Creating companies, branches and locations runs through endpoints that check one thing first: your rank on the tenant, which must be OWNER or ADMIN. That rank lives in the platform’s own records, not in the tenant database, and it is granted under Tenant Admins by somebody who already has it. Two surprises are worth knowing now. Holding the rank is not the same as holding permissions: assigning a user to a role is checked against a separate tenant-database permission, and an administrator with only the rank gets a flat 403 there. And anyone sees an applet only once it has been installed for them — which applies to you. Open Tenant Admin and confirm you have Organisation, Chart of Account, Tax Configuration, Cashbook, Sales Invoice, Ledger and Journal, and Financial Report. You need all seven before the last lesson.

Reference: Tenant Admin Applet — Before you can use it

Step 3 — Understand why the order is not a preference

After this step you will stop looking for the setup wizard, because there is not one. There is no checklist screen anywhere in BigLedger that walks a new tenant through its own configuration. What exists instead is an order derived from what each applet states it needs before it can be used — a chart before a company, a company before a branch, a branch before a settlement link, tax codes and GL codes before an item. Every arrow in that chain is something an applet’s own page says it requires. Follow it and each screen has what it asks for. Jump ahead and you meet the same symptom over and over: a field that is empty, a tab that will not render, or a document that finalises and then quietly posts nothing.

Reference: Core Module — The order a new tenant sets things up in

Step 4 — Know that none of this posts anything

After this step you will stop expecting a confirmation that never comes. Everything you are about to create is master data. It has no document type, no debit or credit, no stock movement and no journal of its own. It writes rows that documents in every other module read at the moment they go final. Two things you do in this course write to the ledger anyway: the opening balances you enter in lesson five, which BigLedger stores as a journal on the primary ledger, and the cashbook’s cash transfer. That is why a configuration mistake here is so quiet. Nothing rejects it when you save. The cost lands on somebody else’s screen, days later, in sales or purchasing or inventory, and usually as a document that looks finished and has nothing behind it.

Reference: Core Module — What posts, and what does not

Step 5 — Know that nobody will approve any of this

After this step you will set expectations with your finance manager correctly. There is no approval engine over master data in BigLedger. Nobody countersigns a new GL code, a changed credit limit or a supplier’s new bank account. The only control is who holds the permission to open the applet in the first place, which is why this course keeps sending you back to Tenant Admin. Plan for that now: decide which two or three people own this configuration before you grant anyone else access, because the audit trail records applet installs and generic documents, and role, permission-set and user-link changes leave no audit row at all.

Reference: Core Module — What this module has no engine for

Step 6 — Know where you will come back

After this step you will know the shape of the whole course. You start outside the Organisation applet, in Tenant Admin, because nothing opens without the rank and the installed applets. Then the chart, because Create Company will not accept a company without one. Then the company, its branches and its locations. Then back into the Chart of Account applet for the ledger, the set of books and the fiscal year, and then — because saving a default GL code needs a ledger to hang a sub-ledger on — the mapping that decides whether documents post at all. Then tax codes, cashbooks and settlement methods. And then back to Tenant Admin one more time, because permission sets cannot be scoped to a company or a branch until those records exist. The last lesson finalises one invoice and proves the lot.

Reference: Core Module — The order a new tenant sets things up in

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Name the four records you are about to create"]
  s2["Step 2 — Check that you can start at all"]
  s3["Step 3 — Understand why the order is not a preference"]
  s4["Step 4 — Know that none of this posts anything"]
  s5["Step 5 — Know that nobody will approve any of this"]
  s6["Step 6 — Know where you will come back"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: The chart comes before the company · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation