Understanding the Sale/Purchase screen

Sale and Purchase transactions like invoices, Supplier quotes and Purchase Orders all share a common-looking screen. Not all fields are available in all of the Screens (for example there is no payment history on a Quote), the Sales Invoice shows nearly all possible fields.

Some of these buttons can be removed or added at a type level. Most Actionstep users would never use the "Convert to" function it could be removed in your database. Enabling or disabling these buttons is done via Admin > Billing > Sale Purchase types (this is aliased): Click on the type and edit.

There is a lot of information available on this screen so we will break it down by parts to explain the features in each. Read below to find out more details the parts that make up each.

The Title Bar

This gives you basic details about the transaction such as what it is and where it has come from.

 

Transaction Type and Number

This lets you know what type of transaction you are looking at (Invoice, Purchase Order, Credit Note, etc), and the system generated number for it. If the Sale/Purchase transaction is in draft format it will also show here.

Title

 This is a manually filled in field for your reference (always use for a Template type transaction). The title can be configured to be shown in your PDF of the document.

 Action Details

The Action ID, Name and reference of the Action that this Sale/Purchase transaction will be linked to. This is drawn from the transaction creation wizard or from the Action that you created the Sale/Purchase transaction from. You can click on the icon beside the Action ID () to open the Action in a new tab.

Sales Agent

 This is the person who is credited with bringing about the sale or purchase. This can be used in some of Actionstep reports. You can view the contact details of this person by clicking on the icon () beside their name.

If the Sale/Purchase transaction was created from an Action this will by default be the contact that the Action is assigned to.

Credit Limit Details

This shows the credit limit you have set for all clients (or this particular client). It will show the limit and available credit for the client. To learn more about credit limits see here: Contact Credit Limits

The Transaction Information Tabs

This displays more specific details about the Sales/Purchase transaction.

Customer/Supplier Box

This gives you details about who you will be either billing or being billed from or issuing a credit to. It will display as the "Supplier" for Purchase transactions and "Customer" for Sales transactions (though these names can be changed in The Sale/Purchase Types).

When you create an invoice through the Action Billing Screen (see Billing a Single Matter) the contacts that you have loaded against the Action/Matter will be loaded as the Customer. When creating a transaction through the Actionstep Accounting menu you will be prompted to enter the client.

You can change the Customer or Supplier and choose to invoice more than one person. If you click on the name of the customer you will be given an option to choose who will be the Primary Customer/Supplier and also nominate secondary customers.

Click on image to enlarge

You can also bring up the contact record of the Customer or Supplier by clicking on the icon beside their name .

Address Box

There are three tabs on this box, click on any to update them.

Bill To

This is where the transaction should be sent to. Typically it will pull the postal address of the Primary Customer/Supplier when you create the transaction. If you change the Primary Customer/Supplier it will update the address to that contacts.

This field can be manually updated by clicking into the box and over writing the current address. This will change the address on the document only, it will not update the clients details.

Ship To

This is where the document should be sent to. Typically it will pull the physical address of the Primary Customer/Supplier when you create the transaction but if you create the transaction through the Actionstep Accounting menu you can nominate if the shipping address should be:

• My Shipping Address - The physical address of your own company/organisation
• To be collected - Will display "To be collected".
• Action Client Shipping Address - The physical address of the client as they are loaded against your Action/Matter
• Action Primary Participant Shipping Address - The Physical address of the contact who is loaded against the Action/Matter as the Primary Participant

If you change the Primary Customer/Supplier it will update the address to that contacts.

This field can be manually updated by clicking into the box and over writing the current address. This will change the address on the document only, it will not update the clients details.

Shipping Notes

This is a space for you to enter in any notes that should be taken into consideration when shipping. Whatever you type into this failed can be configured to be included in the paper version of your document. 

Details Box

This box gives you a basic details about the invoice. Most are self explanatory but we have given details of each below and their features.

Title	Description and Features
Date	The Date that the transaction was set as. This will usually be the date that the transaction is created it can be set to another date while the invoice is being created (when created through the Accounting menu). The date can also be changed by clicking on the date that is currently displayed.
Valid Until	The Date that the Sales or Purchase document is valid until. This will be most likely set to a month from the Invoice Date. The date can also be changed by clicking on the date that is currently displayed.
Our Reference (eg, Invoice #)	This is the reference you use to identify this particular transaction. Again, this can be manually changed by clicking on the existing number. Please note that these are exclusive references. You will not be allowed to use a reference that is already being used by another transaction of the same type.
Shipping Date	The date that the goods would be shipped (if the transaction is concerning goods that will be shipped). This is normally set to the date that the transaction is created but again can be changed manually by clicking on the date that is currently displayed in the Details Box.
Their Reference (eg, Customer P/O #)	This is the reference that the other party (customer or supplier) have given you, such as a Purchase Order number. If no reference is set you will see the message "–not set–". You can manually change this by clicking on the reference that is currently displayed in the Details Box.
Payment Due	This is when the payment for this transaction is due. It will normally be displayed as the date and the Payment Terms that qualified what that date is, for example, 10 Days would be 10 days from the invoice date. You can click on the date to set a date manually or you can click on the Payment Terms to choose another that has been loaded against your system. You can view edit and create new the Payment Terms under Admin > Billing > Payment Terms.
Sales Rep	The contact that the revenue (or cost) of this transaction will be linked to. This field is used for certain reports within Actionstep so that you can track which staff members are generating income/costs for the company. Again, click on the currently set contact to choose another system user to assign as the Sales Rep.
Price List	Used for inventory in Actionstep, this allows you to choose which Price List you are applying to any inventory items that are in the transaction. Click on the currently displayed Price List to choose another. (This feature will not appear in many Actionstep systems. If you want to learn more about how to configure inventory for your database see our user guide: Inventory).
Currency	Used only in for Actionstep databases where multi-currency is configured. You can choose which currency the transaction will be created in. Click on the currently displayed currency to change it to other currency options configured for your system. You can also click on the rate (to the right of the currency) to choose what exchange rate to use for this invoice. To learn more about Actionstep Multi-currency capabilities see out user guide: Foreign Exchange - Currencies and Exchange Rates
Inclusive (tick box)	Tick this box to have the items in the line items (and headings) to show prices including tax. This will update the figures displayed in the Unit Cost, Unit Sell and Total Sell columns of the transaction.
Print Items (tick box)	This tick box controls what will be displayed when you export this transaction to PDF (the "paper copy" of the document). Ticking this box will allow all the line items (and headings) to appear in the PDF of the transaction. Untick the box if you wish to hide these items. You can also control how line items in individual headings appear or not but this tick box will affect all items in the invoice.
Print Pricing (tick box)	This tick box controls what will be displayed when you export this transaction to PDF (the "paper copy" of the document). Ticking this box will allow all the Price of the line items (and headings) to appear in the PDF of the transaction. Untick the box if you wish to hide the prices of these from the PDF of the transaction. You can also control how prices in individual headings appear or not but this tick box will affect all items in the invoice.

 

Other Information Box

There are five different tabs on this box and each display different information about the Sale/Purchase transaction you are looking at.

Summary

 The Summary tab shows details of the total cost, margin and markup based on the variables entered in the transaction

Payments

 Details of any payments or reversal of payments that might have been made on this transaction. To edit or see more details on any one of these payments simply click on the blue link for the payments date. New Payments can be loaded from this screen as well.

Relations

 If the transaction was created from another transaction (a quote converted to an invoice, for example) then you can see the transactions that were created in relation to the current transaction.

Payment Schedule

This will only be displayed on invoices that have been generated from a matter which has scheduled payments loaded against it. This tab will give a break down the scheduled payments that have been entered. To learn more about Scheduled payments see our user guide on Fixed Fee Billing.

Log 

This will display a log of changes made to the transaction (such as being created, posted to the new General Ledger, etc).  

The main body of the Transaction

This is where the body of your transaction is displayed. These will be broken down into lines and there are different line types that you can use.

 

Tabs

The majority of information you keep about the invoice is stored transaction Items tab but there is an additional Descriptions tab and an Additional Notes tab. These are places for you to enter free text passages that you can configure to appear ion the paper copy of the transaction that you send out.

Multi-row Select menu

If you wish to select (or deselect) all lines click the to bring up the menu. If you wish to select your lines tick the lines prior to clicking the 

If you have not selected any boxes you can also use this button to Organise... ( move line items from one heading to another) or Jump to heading... (allows you to more easily navigate to a specific heading - useful for those who use invoices with a large number of headings within other headings).

 

 

Line Icons

Allows you to see at a glance what type of line you are dealing with. You can also click on this icon to get more information.

Heading

 Standard Line Item

 Inventory Item

Markup  Item

Create new line items

Create new Line Item Options

Allows you to create a new Line. Select a different option depending on which one what you are wanting to enter. 

 

 Each line will have a number of columns that can be populated:

Order	This will dictate the order of the line items in your supplier invoice. For the most part, users are not concerned about the order in which items appear on this screen so it is ignored but you can, if you want, change the numbers in this column to change the order of your items. The change will be affected when you save or save as draft the supplier invoice.
Matter	This column will appear only if you have not linked the supplier invoice to a matter.  If it appears, you can choose a matter in Actionstep that will be linked to cost in this line item.  If you are wanting to bill a cost onto a client then you will have to populate this column or have the whole invoice linked to a matter. EXAMPLE Supplier invoices as a whole can be linked to a matter or, if the whole supplier invoice is not linked, you can link individual items.  If you engage the services of a contractor to work on one matter, you will link the whole supplier invoice that the contract gives you to the matter. If you have documents couriered on a daily basis but are only charged per month by the courier company, you may want the supplier invoice from the courier company to not be linked to a single matter but for any couriers that you can link to specific matters, you could create separate line item in the supplier invoice for each matter so you can break the courier costs down by the mater they are for.
Item Code	This is an optional field that you may want to populate if there are particular codes associated with different items in a supplier invoice.  This is not a function usually used by a law firm but Actionstep does offer a report that allows you to track items by their Item code.
Expense Acc	This item will need to be populated for every line item in your supplier invoice. From this field, you can search for and select the general ledger account that you would like this item coded to.  TIP Think of this as a way for you to categories what type of expense this line item is for.  You are able to type to help you find your account faster. You can use the account name or number to help find it.  The cost of sale then expenses general ledger accounts will display first but you are able to select any GL account from this box except for some system accounts or bank accounts.
GST/VAT	In this field, you choose what sales tax rate will be applied to this line item. This field will be renamed based on the sales tax name of your region (i.e., GST, VAT). This field should populate to the default tax rate when you select the general ledger account from the 'Expense Acc' field (above).
Title	This is where you enter the description of the line item. We would recommend that you enter in a short description of what you were being charged for this line item.
Bill	If you are hoping to bill this line item onto your client, tick this box.  By having this ticked, Actionstep will automatically create a billable expense record for the appropriate matter. This means the next time you bill that matter, the expense will be included in that bill. TIP To bill the cost of a supplier invoice onto a client there are three parts of a line item that will need to be set: The Matter column (if the supplier invoice is not already linked to a matter) The Bill tick box column The UTBMS column (if your client requires UTBMS codes) The Unit Sell column
UTBMS	UTBMS (or Uniform Task-Based Management System) is a process where the items you bill are categorized based on a fixed set of codes. This is a system required by some law firms client to help them understand the break down of what they are being billed for.  In the supplier invoice line item, we have this so that if you bill this line item onto your client, you can assign a UTMBS code to that billable item as you create it. If you don't Bill using LEDES or UTBMS then please ignore this option.
Flag	This is not a standard option in most supplier invoices but can be enabled. The flag is just a box that allows you to click on it to add a flag to a line item.  Users use this when they require that supplier invoices are reviewed before being finalised. The flags allow a user to show which line items have been checked and which have not.  There are four states to the flag column (a blank flag/no flag, a green tick, a yellow flag and a red flag) and you can click on it to change from one state to the next.
Qty	Use this column to show how many items were in this line item. EXAMPLE You might have been charged for the leasing of five computers at $125.00 each. In that case, you would enter "5" into the 'Qty' column, leave the 'Unit' column as "EA" (for each) and enter "125" into the 'Unit Cost' column. This will give you a total cost of $625.00. You might have engaged a contractor to supply extra legal services. They complete 35 hours at $150.00 per hour. In that case, you would enter "35" under the 'Qty' column, change the 'Unit' column to "Hr" (for hours) and enter "150" into the 'Unit Cost' column. This will give you a total cost of $5,850.00.
Unit	The unit is the unit of measure for this line item. Typically most users will leave this set to "Each".
Unit Cost	This is the cost of each item in the line item.  The Unit cost and the Qty column will calculate the total value of a line item.
Unit Sell	Unit Sell is used when you are billing on the cost of the line item to a client. Typically, you will want this to equal the amount in the Unit cost if you want to pass on all the costs to the client but we do present a separate field in case you wish to discount or markup the cost s for the client.
Total Cost	Total cost will be the total cost of that line item.  This is calculated by taking the Qty multiplied by the Unit cost.  You can click straight into this box and adjust the amount in it. When you do so, the unit cost will be adjusted to ensure that the Qty multiplied by the Unit cost equals the total cost.

Delete Buttons

To remove any line you can simply click on the cross icon next to that line to remove it.

The Buttons

The buttons allow you to action change on the transaction that you are looking at. Some of the functions below might not be available on your system though they can be configured to be available by going into the Sale/Purchase type for the type of transaction you are in (Admin > Billing > Billing/Expense Types, then click on the relevant type of transaction).

The Save button 

There are seven options when you hover over the Save button. We explain each of them below:

Save	This will save any changes, posting the supplier invoice to your general ledger. It will keep the screen open, handy if you want to create a payment or upload a supporting document before closing.
Save & Close	This will save any changes, posting the supplier invoice to your general ledger It will close the supplier invoice screen once the transaction is posted.
Save & Export to PDF	This will save any changes, posting the supplier invoice to your general ledger. You will be redirected to a screen where you can preview what the PDF version of this transaction will look like. You can also download or email the transaction as a PDF or as a Word document.
Save & Email PDF	This will save any changes, posting the supplier invoice to your general ledger. You will be redirected to a screen where you can preview what the PDF version of this transaction will look like. You can also download or email the transaction as a PDF or as a Word document.
Save Draft	This will save any changes you have made but it will not post the supplier invoice to the general ledger.  The supplier invoice will stay on screen so you can make further changes before you post it.
Save Draft & Close	This will save any changes you have made but it will not post the supplier invoice to the general ledger.  The supplier invoice screen will be closed, taking you to your list of supplier invoices.
Save Draft and Preview PDF	This will save any changes you have made but it will not post the supplier invoice to the general ledger.  You will be redirected to a screen where you can preview what the PDF version of this transaction will look like. You can also download or email the transaction as a PDF or as a Word document.

	If you have already saved the transaction then the button will display as Edit. You will have click on this button to move the status from Open to Draft before you can make any changes to the transaction. You may not be able to Edit a transaction if it already has a payment loaded against it. Restrictions can be placed on your system that will stop a transaction from being moved back into draft. If this is the case you will be given options of what fields you can update.
	Convert To You can Convert the currently open transaction to another Sales or Purchase transaction. This comes in handy when you need to convert a Purchase Order to an Invoice, for example. Doing this will close the current transaction that you have open and create a new transaction of the type you selected.
	Close Choose this option to close the screen. Remember to save your changes first. Clicking Close will not save any changes.
	Import This allows you to import line items from another Sale or Purchase transaction. This can be useful when you have created two transactions that you would like to combine or if there are line items in another invoice you would like to duplicate in this transaction. Once selected a dialogue box will open prompting your to search for the transaction you would like to import the line items from (you can search by number of name of the transaction). You can then choose which heading on the currently open transaction you would like those line items to appear under. Lastly, choose the line items from the other transaction you would like to import. Click image to enlarge This process will not remove the line item from the transaction that you have copied them from. It will only create duplicate copies in the existing transaction.
	Export This allows you to view the details of this transaction outside the current screen. Exporting to PDF will allow you preview, download or email the paper version of your document (the invoice that you send to your clients, for example). You also have the option to export it to a CSV file which will open the document as a spreadsheet. You can by-pass the Preview screen and go straight to the email screen by selecting "To email (as PDF)".
	Documents You can save external documents to the Actionstep document. For example, you can scan and upload a copy of a supplier invoice that your supplier sent you. We recommend that you do this for accurate record keeping. Use the Documents button to either view the files that have been loaded against the Sale or Purchase transaction or upload a new one.
	Delete This will delete the document that you currently have open. This option is only available if you are in a Draft transaction.
	Sort This allows you to re-order the line items in your transaction based on the options available.
	Update This option is only applicable if you are using Inventory with Actionstep. Clicking the Update Pricing From Inventory option will overwrite any current pricing you have entered with the pricing as is in the Price List you have applied to this transaction.
	Create Credit This option allows you to create a credit of the transaction that you have open. Clicking the button will open a wizard that will allow you to create a new credit based on the line items in the currently open transaction. See our User Guide here for more details on how to create a credit: Credit your Clients (the process is the same if crediting a supplier document or a sale document).
	Reports Access the  various reports (if any) that are available for the type of dtransaction that you have open.