Tax codes, cashbooks and the ways money moves — 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 GadgetSphere can post a journal but cannot yet charge tax on a sale or take money for one. Tax codes, cashbooks and settlement methods are three small screens that reach into sales, purchasing, the till and bank reconciliation at once. About twelve minutes.

Step 1 — Create the tax codes, and nothing else

After this step GadgetSphere has its service tax codes. A tax code is a code, a type, a rate and a country, and that is genuinely all it is. The applet writes one row and posts nothing, creates nothing and queues nothing. Create an output code for the six per cent service tax GadgetSphere charges and the input code for tax it pays on purchases, and resist the urge to look for more settings, because there are none that work: the applet’s own settings screens are unfinished and no code anywhere reads a value from them. The behaviour that is configurable here is the tax-code data itself.

Reference: Tax Configuration — Lifecycle and effects

Step 2 — Know where the tax account actually comes from

After this step you will stop looking for a GL field on the tax code. There is not one, and there never was. Which account a tax amount lands in is decided entirely by the company’s output tax and input tax default GL code links, which you mapped in the last lesson. That is deliberate: it means tax posting is a company decision rather than a per-code one, and it means you cannot send two different service tax codes to two different accounts. It also means the tax mapping’s sub-ledger matters as much here as it did there, because a link with an empty sub-ledger drops the tax line silently and fails the document after final.

Reference: Tax Configuration — Before you can use it

Step 3 — Understand the type, because it decides what appears on a line

After this step your sales lines will offer the right codes. The line-level tax drop-down does not show every code you created. It loads them all and then filters on the code’s type: on a sales document it keeps only the output types, and everywhere else it keeps the input and purchase types. A blank entry is always added at the top so a line can be left untaxed. So a code with the wrong type is not a cosmetic error — it is a code that will never appear where someone needs it, and will appear where they do not. Set the type carefully and test one line of each kind.

Reference: Tax Configuration — Lifecycle and effects

Step 4 — Set the company defaults, and know the rate is a snapshot

After this step new documents start taxed correctly and old ones stay as they were. Go back to the company’s Tax tab in the Organisation applet and set the default sales code and the default purchase code, with the inclusive flags that match how GadgetSphere quotes prices. Those pre-fill every new document and anyone can override them per line. One thing to be clear about with your finance manager: when a document line picks up a tax code, it copies the rate onto itself and keeps it. Changing a rate here later affects new documents only and restates nothing that is already saved, which is exactly what you want at a rate change and exactly what surprises people.

Reference: Organization — Company Tax tab

Step 5 — Create the cashbooks, matching company to chart

After this step GadgetSphere has somewhere to put money. A cashbook is any place money sits: a bank account, a cash drawer, a card acquirer, an electronic wallet. Each one belongs to one company and carries one GL code — and that GL code must come from that company’s own chart, because the backend refuses a mismatch outright rather than warning you. For a group with twenty-eight of these across several banks, decide the naming before the first one, the way you did for branch codes. Consistency here is what makes bank reconciliation readable a year from now, when somebody else is doing it.

Reference: Cashbook — Before you can use it

Step 6 — Create settlement methods and link them to branches

After this step the right buttons appear at the right counters. A cashbook is where money rests; a settlement method is a way it moves — cash, card, transfer, wallet, cheque. Settlement methods need a cashbook to exist first, and then need branches linked to them, because the transaction applets filter the methods they offer by which branches are linked. Only after that can the Organisation applet’s branch Settlement tab tie them to the branch. The classic symptom of stopping halfway is a tender that exists everywhere in configuration and cannot be selected at one shop. That is one of three things: no settlement type on the method, the branch not linked on its Branch tab, or no branch default set for that tender type.

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

Step 7 — Map settlement charges if any method costs you money

After this step your card takings will post with their fees. If a settlement method carries a charge — a card acquirer’s percentage, a gateway fee — the charge line of every settlement using that method posts to the company’s settlement charges default GL code. Leave that mapping empty and the charge line resolves no account, is dropped, and the journal job then fails its balance check: the same silent-drop pattern you met with tax. GadgetSphere takes card payments at every branch, so this is not optional for it. Map it once on the company, and the fee lines look after themselves from then on.

Reference: Cashbook — Before you can use it

Step 8 — Know the two cashbook settings that other applets read

After this step you will not be puzzled by two screens that appear to do nothing here. The cashbook’s Members tab writes rows that no screen in the Cashbook applet reads — they are read by Bank Reconciliation, which uses them to limit each user to the cashbooks they are a member of. And Branch Settings holds a default settlement method per tender type per branch, which the Cashbook applet also never reads and the till does, on its settlement adjustment screen. Both are configured in one applet and consumed in another, which is the recurring shape of this whole course.

Reference: Cashbook — Applet settings

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Create the tax codes, and nothing else"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know where the tax account actually comes from"]
  s3["Step 3 — Understand the type, because it decides what appears on a line"]
  s4["Step 4 — Set the company defaults, and know the rate is a snapshot"]
  s5["Step 5 — Create the cashbooks, matching company to chart"]
  s6["Step 6 — Create settlement methods and link them to branches"]
  s7["Step 7 — Map settlement charges if any method costs you money"]
  s8["Step 8 — Know the two cashbook settings that other applets read"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  s6 --> s7
  s7 --> s8
  

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: Finalise one document and prove it · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation