Sales Ledger - Financials - In Depth

The de Facto S5 Sales Ledger accounts software module is fully integrated into the Nominal Ledger and Banking modules, all of which are integrated with the Logistics Suite and Production and Costing modules. Like all de Facto S5 modules, the Financial Suite provides built in Customer and Supplier Relationship Management (CRM/SRM) features.

The Sales Ledger module provides key features from the Financial Suite, such as Multi Currency and Open Period Accounting. The Suite also benefits from all of the System-wide features, such as easy Data Importing, and Email and Fax Integration.

Detailed customer information can be held, including unlimited numbers of addresses and contacts as part of the CRM module, along with user-definable customer profiles for marketing purposes.

Multiple debtor accounts can be held in the nominal ledger, and the individual sales ledger accounts can be linked to the relevant control account. This provides an effective way of handling sub-ledgers and also, for instance, the control of factored and currency debtors.

Sales ledger accounts can be specified as having a default, a choice or a restricted list of nominal accounts that they can be used with.

In addition to the basic account record, further options are added when this module is used in conjunction with the sales order processing module.

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Sales Ledger Customers

The S5 Customer Window provides the central control for all customer related data. Additional customer information is always available via the 'more info' menu options.

Credit Control begins with a comprehensive credit control profile section within the customer record. This provides flexible choices of credit terms, approval and chasing methods. Debtors' lists and statement production are both easy to perform and have a multitude of options, for instance, statements can be sent to head offices as well as delivery points.

In addition to the normal statements, batches of credit chasing letters can be produced on an escalating basis. Credit controllers can also take advantage of the last and next chase dates, which, when combined with a simple Vista, facilitate quick targeting of who needs chasing, etc.

A dedicated account status window provides details of the customers credit history, the ability to reprint invoices, raise statements, as well as how to verify receipts which have been allocated, and, where necessary, even change allocations.

When integrated with the de Facto S5 sales order processing system, credit checking can be fully automated, not only based on credit limits, but also taking into account due dates. A dedicated credit controller's window provides a host of features for the easy control and releasing of orders.

The Sales Ledger provides all the facilities for Journal entries you'd expect, including recurring, reversing and template journals. In common with all Financial Suite transactions, journals can use quantities in their entries. VAT entries are also catered for directly from journals, as either 'net + VAT', or 'gross - VAT'. VAT inputs and outputs are also definable.

Sales Ledger receipts and payments are fully integrated into the banking module, which provides cheque printing as well as BACS or online banking integration. Flexible receipt allocations provide many easy-to-use features such as oldest first and best fit matching. Facilities are also provided for over and partial credit allocation, especially useful when handling un-agreed debit notes.

Fast entry options are also available for all types of transactions; these allow the required fields to be specified by user and transaction type. These facilities are designed to speed up repetitive data entry tasks such as opening balance entries.

A further useful option shared by all de Facto S5 transaction types is the ability to have both internal and external references, as well as a unique system number for all transactions. Descriptions and notes facilities are available at both header and detail level on all transactions. Additionally, user entered reference and description data can easily be corrected after posting.

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Sales Ledger - Account Transactions

The S5 Account Transaction windows facilitate easy access to all account transactions, credit control information and document reprinting.

Contra Accounting is provided between the Sales and Purchase Ledgers, as is a useful back-to-back facility for converting a purchase invoice into a sales invoice, including standard mark-up facilities.

This provides the ability to specify a range of accounts which can be considered as a group for overall credit checking purposes.

Cross Account Allocation allows groups of sales ledger accounts to be grouped for payment and allocation purposes. When receiving a group payment, this can be allocated across multiple accounts. The system will then automatically construct the required contra transactions.

A new facility has been added to S5 (in v5.1) so that from the Sales Ledger Allocation Screen you can now lookup any other customer account, in the same currency. This will then add to the allocation window any Sales Ledger transactions with outstanding amounts. The cash can then be allocated outstanding invoices from that other account. The mechanics of this cross account allocation will be the same as the current payment group allocation process in terms of ledger postings, but without the requirement to have a formal payment group structure.

There will be a global parameter in the Sales Ledger parameters to enable this feature, the default setting will be for it to be disabled.

An example of this is where the situation exists where an LEA may pay sales invoices raised against an individual school, this situation could now be handled by the standard payment groups as defined above. There also exists the situation where an invoice may be paid by other organisations, invoices on that one account may be paid, over time, by a number of different organisations, the current solution would require ongoing maintenance of the payment groups.

Each of the categories listed below will have multiple versions exploiting the many options that the standard reports provide.

In addition to Sales Ledger specific reports, de Facto S5 provides a comprehensive series of Standard Reports, many of which can be easily parameter driven by the user. S5 further provides the Vistas feature, which are a powerful and easy way of selecting, sorting, displaying and working with data from either single or multiple tables.