Purchase Invoices

When an invoice is received from one of your regular suppliers, this should be entered into Easy Books as a purchase invoice. It is not necessary to do this for one-off purchases where payment is made immediately; this is used for suppliers you have an account with. To do this, tap on the Purchases icon on the main screen. The list of purchase invoices is displayed. To add a new one, tap on the + in the top navigation bar.

The entry screen shown allows you to set the details from the invoice. In the example screenshot, we have received an invoice for £29.79 (ex-vat) from our phone provider. We link the invoice to an expense account under Account 1, in this case we have an account in the "Indirect Expenses" category called “Telephone calls”.

The amount to enter should be the ex-VAT figure if you are accounting for VAT, otherwise it will be the total amount. Don't worry though; the app prompts for which it is automatically.

When you select a VAT account, the app calculates the amount of VAT it expects and compares this with the amount entered in the VAT box. There is a tolorance of a few pence which can be set in Settings. If the amount is different, this may be a mistake so the VAT label is highlighted in red to warn you.

Tapping on the VAT amount box shows the entry screen for amounts. If there is a suggested VAT amount, this is displayed in a button as shown in the screenshot. If this is the correct amount, simply tap the button. If not, tap the value (in pence) followed by Done. There is no need to tap a decimal point; the amounts are all entered in pence.

When the purchase invoice is saved, the previous screen appears again. This time, the invoice we have entered appears in the list. Invoice lines are coloured to distinguish them from normal transfers. Light red is used to show any purchase invoice lines, light green is used to show any sales invoice lines. You will see the accounts list is also coloured according to the category. This is simply to make it easier to scroll quickly to the account you need.

If you deal with the same group of suppliers regularly, you may find it easier to make a copy of a previous invoice line using the + button at the bottom of the entry screen. You then skip the selection of accounts, and can just change the date, and the amounts if necessary.

(Sales invoices are entered in the same way as purchase invoices. From the main screen, tap Sales).

Paying Your Suppliers

When a purchase invoice is received, typically the payment is due at some time later. So there are two lines per purchase (when the supplier account is used to enter an invoice).

In this example, we have already entered the purchase invoice from our supplier, O2.

We later pay the outstanding invoice from the main “Cheque account”. To do this, tap on Accounts on the main screen, followed by the account the payment is being made from. The current list of transactions is displayed. Since we are recording a new payment from the account, tap the + button in the navigation bar just as when recording the invoice.

Note: You can also find the supplier account and enter the transaction there instead, linking it to the "Cheque account" in the same way. This example uses this method, but you can choose whichever you find easier.

With Account 1 showing the supplier (in this example), we select the "Cheque account" in Account 2 and the date the payment was made. The Debit and Credit button is used to set the direction of the payment and toggles between "Payments & Cr-Notes" and "Purchases". This time, there is no VAT to account for because this has been entered on the invoice. The app prompts you for the amount, hides the VAT options, and the label is changed to Incl-VAT as an aid.

The account for the supplier now shows two lines, one for the invoice received and the other for the outgoing payment from the cheque account. You can tell easily if there is an outstanding balance because the app keeps track of all balances on all the accounts.